Shinobi Autopsy
by fyleisch
Summary: An experiment gone awry, an explosion, strange surroundings. A group of XCOM personnel are warped into an unfamiliar region, filled by people with abilities which beggar belief. There are no signposts on this road into the dark future of humanity, but with determination and ruthless efficiency there may be ways to create light. An XCOM-Naruto crossover set in the Naruto world.
1. Chapter 1-1

_Author Note_

 _Naruto was created by Kishimoto, and the UFO series was created by Mythos Games before being developed by a variety of studios, most recently 2K and Firaxis. This story is set in the Naruto universe, ten years before the start of the manga - a time when several interesting things were happening at once. The story draws from the XCOM canon of the first game (UFO Defense) and the first of the reboots (Enemy Unkown). The Naruto setting is broadly canon compliant at the start, with a minor change to the beginning of the Hyuga affair, but quickly becomes divergent with the arrival of XCOM personnel as the single point of departure.  
_

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"Artifice stable."

"What's the ratio on that aperture?" Dr. Vodyanov asked, moving from computer to computer like a hummingbird, peering at screens over the shoulders of excited lab techs, occasionally pushing them aside to peck at a keyboard or swipe a touch-pad.

"Eight nanometres," came the reply from across the room, where another research scientist attended a large, skeletal steel hemisphere, which cradled a glowing pinprick of light.

"Forget Mars, if we can replicate their spatial shearing, we can take the fight right back to Alpha Centuri, Proxima, or wherever they're coming from," Dr. Vodyanov said, with a sinister smile, at the sight of which at least one lab technician shuddered and looked away.

"Dr. Vodyanov, I'm picking up unusual readings in the sonic range. Mid-frequency oscillations," said Michael Penrose, an elderly assistant, operating one of the consoles furthest from the apparatus. Mike caught a flash of red hair as the doctor swept across the room to stand beside him, looking down at the affronting variety of arcane visualizations dancing on his screens.

"Noise from the electromagnetic induction?" she asked.

"No, that's all accounted for. This pattern is unusually low entropy, it could be a signal," the man replied, sweeping his hand across a touch-pad, navigating a chain of computer menus. "Isolating and amplifying for the lab speakers."

The speakers at the corners of the room crackled into life, and a muffled sound could be heard beneath layers of static, like the sounds of screaming.

"That sounds like vocalisation, but where's it coming from?" Vodyanov asked, turning to face the the pinprick of azurite fire, hanging unsuspended in the skeletal artifice at the other side of the room.

"Check for local interference," a new voice said, heralding the arrival of a man in a business suit at the lab's swinging doors.

"Director Cross, so you finally decided my little project was worthy of your attention?" Vodyanov asked of the newcomer.

"Nada on local interference. Shielding is intact, this is not a terrestrial signal," Michael, the grey haired lab tech replied.

"Could it be coming from the other side?" Cross asked.

"The other side of what?" Vodyanov asked, derisively. "It's just a static field. It doesn't go anywhere by itself."

"Of the hole," Cross persisted, nodding at the pinprick of blue light. "That's what it is, isn't it? A hole in space?"

Dr. Vodyanov turned dismissively from the suited man, back to face the lab's central piece of equipment. "The Threat's interstellar engines use the gravitational shearing around an orphan space-time aperture to accelerate their ships to near-light speeds. There is no 'other side', it's a mathematical construct written out in focused elerium radiation fields."

Vodyanov had barely finished speaking when the screams crackling over the lab's speakers gave way to excited speech. Vodyanov's mouth drooped open as if to give an order, until she was interrupted by the word spilling across the audio stream.

"Is that Japanese?" she asked, almost to herself.

Cross darted to the lab's door and leaned outside, giving orders to the guards outside in quiet, rapid barks. "Call down to personnel, get me a tier-two sentry team." He moved to return to the lab, but faltered for a step, adding, "make sure they have Japanese in their language profile."

The guard outside gave a quick nod, before reaching for a radio as Cross returned to the room.

"Get Captain Shulz in here with an engineer team to check the EM shielding as well, I don't want to shut down the experiment because we picked up a stray TV broadcast," Vodyanov said to one of her own subordinates.

It took less than a minute for a pair of guards to arrive in the lab. One, a tall, chisel faced woman in matte black powered armour, the other a slight man with a shaved head, and a more form fitting light combat suit. They moved as one at a gesture from Cross and took up positions flanking the alloyed hemisphere.

They were barely in position before another group arrived in the lab and quickly went to work. Four engineers in overalls positioned themselves around the room, two drawing hand-held devices with arcane-looking antennas, a third plugging their hand-held into a cable jack set into the wall close to the ground. The fourth, ostensibly the leader of the group, approached Vodyanov.

"Doctor, heard you're having yet more problems with the fucking EM shielding in here," Maggie Shulz said, approaching the doctor. "It's a joke, I told them twice while we were installing it, grounding it to the base's main pin opens up all kinds of feedback paths."

"That may be, Captain. We certainly picked up something. Mike, can you play back the coherent vocalisations?" Vodyanov asked the grey haired lab tech. After a moment later the speakers began replaying the excited yells from earlier.

"What the fuck is that? Are they speaking?" Shulz asked, moving towards the apparatus and holding up her hand-held to the aperture enclosure.

"Girl- bitch- something- Huygens?" Vodyanov suggested as she listened to the excited shouts. "The feed is poor quality, nothing clear enough for a match in the cultural database. Shulz, my techs say there's no local interference, do you have an alternate hypothesis? Cross suggested the aperture might lead somewhere, which sounds preposterous to me, but you built it..."

Shulz grimaced thoughtfully. "We just put the emitters together, to your specs. Mathematically it's distinct from a wormhole, but none of us fucking understand what happens in the aperture. We just want to ride the distortion."

"The sound can't be coming from the aperture," Mark said, spinning in his chair to shine a self-satisfied smile at the pair. "We're still below ten nanometres, too small for sound waves of that frequency to propagate."

Vodyanov sighed and passed a rueful, if slightly disappointed smile around the lab.

A moment passed, and then there was a blinding flash of blue-white light. There was the enormous sound of reverberating feedback, and the skeletal hemisphere around the aperture suddenly bucked violently off the ground, oscillating backwards and forwards in madcap vibration. The front of the tall guard's power armour was black and smoking, and Shulz was on her back clutching her hands to her face.

"Shut it down!" Vodyanov tried to shout, but couldn't hear her own voice over the deep thrumming sound of reverberation. "Shut it down, shut it down!" she cried silently, feeling her throat becoming increasingly raw with each inaudible yell.

Spheres of light began popping throughout the room, adding rainbow hues to the maelstrom of sound, and leaving neatly sliced out spheres of empty space where they intersected solid objects.

There was a flash of light that completely filled Vodyanov's vision, and then there was darkness.


	2. Chapter 1-2

"Doctor Vodyanov! Doctor wake up!" a voice hissed from the darkness.

Groggily Kate forced her eyes open, bringing her hand up to press against the needle pains shooting through her temples. "Shut it down-" she whispered, hoarsely.

"Everything's already fucking shut down!" the voice whispered back.

"Shulz?" Kate asked, trying to force her eyes to focus on the form leaning over her.

It was still dark, but the woman above her held a glowing green stick in one hand, an emergency chemical light, and in the circle of its eerie illumination Kate could see the features of Captain Shulz leaning over her, wearing an expression of concern. As Doctor Vodyanov's vision crystallized, she realised there was something wrong with Shulz's face; its skin was reddened and blistered across her forehead and cheeks, as if she'd suffered a severe solar burn.

"Yeah, it's me. Doctor, does anywhere hurt? Do you remember where you are? Fuck, I mean, where you were?"

"The lab, laboratory Theta, Base Four, the stardrive experiment," Vodyanov said, exploring the ground around her with her hands, and finding that she was lying on damp dirt. "What happened? Were we blown clear?" Vodyanov knew the question was nonsense even as she asked. Base Four was entrenched two hundred meters below ground in China's mountainous Jiangxi province. Any blast powerful enough to throw her outside the base would have vaporised her.

"We were fucking blown somewhere. Are you hurt anywhere?"

"No- my head hurts. Cover the light?"

Shulz cupped the chemical light in her hands, muting the green glow and relieving some of the shooting pain in the doctor's head. In the dimmer light, Vodyanov's night vision began to sharpen, and she could see they were surrounded by trees as tall as any she'd heard of. They looked like some kind of sequoia, but in the darkness, and with her head still throbbing, she couldn't identify the type. She abandoned the dazed line of mental inquiry as low priority.

"Yeah," Shulz drawled, noticing Vodyanov's expression. "I don't think we're in fucking Ganpo Dadi any more."

"Shouldn't be possible," Vodyanov muttered, before starting to struggle to her feet. "Help me up."

With Shulz's arm for support, Vodyanov rose to her feet and brushed her hands down her clothes. The attempt to make herself more presentable turned out to be futile, as even the fire-resistant fabric of her lab coat was blackened and scorched in places. As she took in her immediate surroundings by the feeble chemical light, she felt her heart begin to pound. Scattered around her on the ground were over a dozen bodies, and pieces of bodies.

Some of them could be easily identified as base personnel by their white coats or black-orange overalls, but others were dressed in some kind of black and tan tunics - some kind of uniform, and wore camouflage face paint beneath steel-plated headbands. All of the forms on the ground were mutilated in some way - some missing limbs, some missing more important parts of their anatomy, and some showing their presence only by an orphaned hand or leg, severed cleanly and left behind by whatever took the rest of their bodies.

"What happened here?" Vodyanov asked, aghast.

"Colossal techno-clusterfuck," Shulz reported, slipping her arm around the doctor's elbow to help steady her. "A few of us made it through intact. It looks like we're outside, the motdet shielding held through whatever-that-was, they're giving readings of flat terrain in every direction, heavily forested, to the extent of their range. Nothing like the mountains above Base Four. Motion readings suggest small local fauna, but we haven't had any sightings. These bodies all look human standard, but one of the guards Cross brought up to the lab is fucked, he's freaking out."

"Where are they?" Vodyanov asked, though Shulz was already leading her towards a denser patch of trees near the edge of the carnage.

"Over here. The old geek from your experiment's waking Cross, and Big Bertha's trying to keep her partner quiet."

"Big Bertha?" Vodyanov asked, still dazed, as she was led into the centre of a small copse of trees which circled a grassy clearing around half a dozen meters across. She spotted the slim bald guard from earlier crouched on the ground holding his head in his hands, while the large woman in powered armour knelt beside him and whispered.

"Her," Shulz said, nodding towards the large soldier. "That's not her name, probably, but there's been no time for intro-fuck-tions."

Vodyanov was relieved to see Mike there, splashing cold water from a clear plastic bottle onto Director Cross's muddied face, the older scientist's clothes and wispy hair having faired much better than Vodyanov's own scorched locks.

She saw a pair of orange-jumpsuited engineers, Shulz's subordinates, kicking a steel equipment locker free from a perfectly circular piece of wall plaster, as if the whole container had just been cleanly cut from the laboratory's superstructure. She could see Mike giving Director Cross the same debriefing that Shulz had just given her, though likely with less swearing and in a more respectful tone, and Mike had barely had time to give the briefest explanation before the Director stood and looked around the small circle of survivors.

"Sit-rep," he said, hoarsely, trying to inject confidence he didn't feel into his voice, and being obvious about it. "Engineering first. You," he said, gesturing at Shulz.

"Captain Shulz," the orange-clad woman informed him. "We've got thirteen dead fuckers back there," she jerked her thumb over her shoulder back to where the scattered corpses lay, "and eight live fuckers here. We've got next to no supplies, no intel, it's dark and I've got motion readings of Type 1 fauna at a distance of fifty meters. A minute ago they were at eighty meters."

Cross's mouth twisted into a paroxysm of stress as he looked around the small clearing, finally focusing on the steel locker. "What's that?"

"That's one of the laboratory lockdown caches," Vodyanov answered. "A standard supply locker for anyone caught in the lab after a post-intrusion lockdown. If we can open it, we'll find a complement of side-arms and some MRE packs, and possibly some hardened digital equipment."

"Good, get it open," Cross snapped. The two engineers who were currently crouched trying to bypass the damaged door-lock on the device looked up at him for a silent moment, before returning to their work.

"You, soldier," Cross shouted again, this time directing his attention to the tall, heavily armoured woman trying to comfort her panicking partner. "Solder, to attention!"

The woman looked away from the bald boy crouching below her and turned to face the Director. "Sir?"

"Make a circuit of the camp, form a perimeter," he said, between deep breaths.

"Sir?" she asked again, before looking over at Doctor Vodyanov. "Point of order sir, you're not in command."

"I'm an XCOM strategic director, you insubordinate-"

"Why don't you watch your language, Director," Shulz interrupted darkly. "We're in a fucking twizzle, that doesn't mean we abandoned chain of command. The doctor here's the highest ranking civilian present. You're just a a consulting director - not part of the official base command hierarchy."

Cross scowled then through up his hands. "Don't think you're not getting written up for this. You'll be lucky if you escape insubordination charges."

"It's sergeant Clifford, isn't it?" Vodyanov asked the tall soldier, after a moment's awkward silence.

"Yes sir, Sam Clifford."

"We really need eyes on our perimeter, Sam. Please make a circuit inclusive of our ingress. If you can get a detailed look at what happened there safely, please do it. Shulz, can you ask one of your techs to look after the other soldier?"

"His name's Ben," the sergeant supplied.

"-to look after Ben," Vodyanov said.

"Yeah, hell. Maud, leave the locker alone and look after the boiled egg. The lock's fried anyway, Remy, see if you can find a lever or something."

"Sam," Vodyanov called to the sergeant as the armoured woman began to weave out of the clearing through the trees.

"Sir?"

"Before you go, do you mind?" Vodyanov nodded towards the sealed locker as she spoke, and Sam, getting the hint, walked over and drove four armour-plated fingers through the locker door around its lock, pushing through the steel as if it were paper. She yanked on the metal, and the locker door tore open, revealing a half dozen laser pistols, each resting in a polymer hip holster within its own individually sealed plastic bag. The larger, lower part of the locker was packed with rectangular foil bags.

"Thank you, sergeant," Vodyanov said, peering into the open locker "There's no inventory list, but there should be enough ration packs to sustain ten researchers for three days. There are only eight of us, but we'll be doing hard duty, so call it two days before we run out of food. Water will be a problem if we can't find a local source. We should only be a couple of kilometres from a Yangtze tributary, but with the apparent terrain changes we can't take that for granted."

"Who'd drink from the Gan anyway, fuck," Shulz muttered, pulling a pistol from the locker, tearing it from its plastic bag, and buckling the polymer strap around her waist.

Several frantic minutes passed as the survivors armed themselves, and one of the engineers -Shulz had called him Remy- transferred the rations to a makeshift sling made from his jacket. The blonde, middle aged woman Shulz had called Maud spoke to the cowering Ben in hushed whispers, but the slight soldier seemed no calmer after several minutes of her reassuring voice than he had at the start. Eventually, Vodyanov walked over and crouched beside the man.

"What's wrong?" she asked in a gentle voice, though the question was mostly directed at Maud, and not the muttering soldier.

"He keeps saying something about noise, it's too loud, or something. I think his hearing might have been damaged in the explosion."

"No, too loud!" the man hissed, mostly to himself.

"He's a psionic," Cross drawled from somewhere above Vodyanov's shoulder. "The freaks are damn unreliable, but every Tier-2 sentry unit consists of a heavy and a psion. I've seen this kind of behaviour before, during an Ethereal interrogation. When a psion hits a mind too powerful for it, they just break down."

"What fucking mind?" Shulz asked. "We haven't had any significant contacts since the malfunction. She looked down at her motdet scanner's screen as if to check the truth of her words. "Bertha's coming back."

"I don't know what the stressor is," Cross said. "Maybe the explosion flash fried him, like it did the locker pad, and my cell phone, and every other piece of non-battlefield ready piece of equipment I had."

"It's possible," Vodyanov conceded. "Psionics work along EM channels. I've never heard of an electromagnetic pulse doing neurological damage, but in theory it could happen."

"Too much- everything- everywhere. The birds-" Ben muttered again, clutching his head.

"Maybe you should find a way to shut him up, Doctor," Cross said, putting a sneer into the woman's title. "See if he's carrying a steel tube. Field psions carry a dose of amobarbital for emergencies. It's like sticking a penny in a breaker for psionic stress, just as likely to burn the house down, but I don't like the way he's muttering. Too much like panic-fire precursors."

Maud found a steel cylinder in the soldier's thigh pocket, unscrewed the syringe within and was dosing the man when sergeant Clifford stepped through the trees, back into the clearing. She carried her plasma rifle in one arm, her oversized armoured fist gripping it almost like a pistol. In her left arm she carried a tiny, white bundle.

"What are you doing?" she asked pointedly at Maud, her plasma rifle pointing casually at the sky, but held tightly.

"He wouldn't calm down," Maud said quickly. "I'm just giving him his shot, just a small dose."

Sam seemed to relax, letting her rifle fall before turning to Vodyanov. As she began to give her report, the director also turned to listen intently, still wearing a sour expression.

"Perimeter looks clear, though visibility is down to a hundred meters at most due to the trees, and less than that in places due to darkness," Sam began. Her voice was deep for a woman her age, but her speech was clear and precise. Professional, even above what would be expected from an XCOM sergeant. "No motion readings beyond Type 1, probably local animals. The ingress site is a mess. I counted seven dead base personnel, and five dead locals. The locals were wearing some kind of uniform I didn't recognize, definitely not Chinese militia, or any military I've heard of. They were lightly armed, mostly blades and throwing knives, along with rolls of paper and paper tags inked with calligraphy - possibly encoded orders or target markers. I also found this," here Sam angled her body to push the white bundle forward. With the fingertips of her gun hand she pulled back a piece of cloth, revealing the ghostly pale face of an unconscious child, framed by hair as black as the night sky. She couldn't have been much more than three years old.

"An infant!" Vodyanov gasped.

"Great! Why did you bring it here!" Cross almost shouted.

"She's alive! She won't wake up! She might be hurt," Sam said, pulling the bundle back and tugging the child's collar back up to shelter her face from the cool night air.

Doctor Vodyanov pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sergeant, I commend your humanity, but we're in a difficult enough situation already. Did you notice any tracks from the native group?"

"No, but they look like they could have been coming from the South West."

"Then we'll go North East. We need to avoid population centres until we have the lay of the land. XCOM is still a classified project, and we don't want unsecured local broadcasts to give our position away to the Threat until we can get a coded signal out. Sergeant Clifford, take the Director and Remy back to the ingress site. Search and strip the bodies. I want tools, weapons, clothing, documents, local currency, everything they have. Pile the bodies."

"What about our people?" Sam asked, a warning in her voice.

"They're not people any more, Sergeant. Treat them the same way. I want you to salvage some of the clothing to insulate the infant and leave her there. If this group was all armed and uniformed it probably didn't include the child's family, and if they were travelling without provisions we're probably close to their home base. We'll leave her behind with Cross, and when we've made some distance he can set off a plasma flare to mark her location to anyone nearby, and then catch up."

Captain Clifford seemed on the cusp of objecting, looking down at the sleeping child in her arms. "Doctor, sir, I suggest we keep the child with us, until we can meet some of the locals for a safe hand-off."

"No, Sergeant. I agree in principle, but in the fight against the Threat we can't afford a heart, not much of a heart. We'll leave the child. Once we have daylight we can gain some height and perform long range reconnaissance of the ingress site, if the infant's still there we can consider returning. A single night in the open won't kill her, and we haven't seen any dangerous native fauna."

Sam bit her lip, but remained quiet.

"Why am I the one who has to set off the flare?" the director said, though his tone suggested he didn't expect an answer.

"You have a runner's physique," Vodyanov said, giving a smile, at the sight of which at least one of the survivors grimaced and turned away.

A band of warriors ran through the moonless forest. Clothed in white, each with pale faces and hair of midnight black. Most of the figures' eyes, pale eyes without feature, showed a grim determination, but the eyes of their leader were pinched into fury, glowing with the promise of violence. Forsaking the tree road for the speed the forest floor offered in the wide, scrub-free terrain immediately around the village, the rescue party were a white streak in the night.

A flicker in front of the group made each of the warriors tense, until the blur resolved itself into a black haired men in one of the clan's signature kimonos. The yellow ribbon which held back the man's black hair marked him as Tokuma Hyuga, the reconnaissance prodigy serving as the party's forward scout.

"Hiashi-sama, there's something strange ahead."

"Report," Hiashi whispered between bared teeth, slowing his pace only slightly to allow the winded scout to take up a position beside him as they ran.

"There is a green flare in the sky several kilometres ahead," he said.

"Hiashi-sama," a figure to Hiashi's left hissed. "The Kumo filth must be signalling their allies."

"Hn," the clan head replied. "It doesn't matter how much trash they bring. We will recover our clan's future." An quiet echo of acknowledgement rippled throughout the hunting party, each member offering support for their leader's determination.

The pack ran in silence for several minutes, Hiashi scowling as he became able to glimpse the flare between gaps in the foliage above. As they neared the origin point of the flare, one by one, each member of the hunting party began to slow. Some held up their hands and muttered a single word, while others seemed merely to concentrate for a moment, before the veins surrounding their strange eyes bulged.

Their cautious approach was abandoned when their leader spotted a small form, lying unconscious, wrapped in black and tan tunics before a pile of naked bodies. The party darted forward at a sprint, and Hiashi swept the child up in his arms, examining her face and body for any signs of injury.

"Hiashi-sama, they're all dead!" Tokuma said, wonderingly. "Could lady Hinata have-"

"Don't be absurd!" Hiashi snapped, finally satisfying himself that the small girl hadn't even been scratched during her abduction. Her lack of consciousness worried him, but knowing her to be a timid girl, the man was hopeful that she had merely fainted, and had ridden out the horror of her kidnapping in the innocent, protective sleep of a child.

"These are Kumo-nin" Tokuma said, kicking bodies from the pile, noting their distinctive skin tone and hair colour. "But these- I don't recognise them. Strangers."

Hiashi strode over to the pile of corpses, noting their battered, dismembered forms with a frown as he held Hinata to his chest. "It seems the kidnappers were ambushed by another group," he began, surveying the bodies. "A battle ensued, but it did not go well for the attackers. A wide area suicide technique was used, cutting down the Kumo-nin as well as the ambushers. The second group's reserve forces removed the clothing and weapons of their team-mates to prevent identification, and fled... but not before signalling us and seeing to the comfort of my heir."

Hiashi stroked the hair of the girl as he spoke, moving to kick over each of the dead bodies for a more detailed examination.

"Bastard!" Tokuma cried as he saw the face of one of the corpses. "You were right Hiashi-sama. The kidnapper was the same one who came to us offering an alliance."

"Yes, and they will pay dearly for their insult. Hitomi, Takuma, track the remnants of the strangers. They may have helped us with our prey, but they have stolen my revenge. Capture them if possible, or simply observe them if that is too much for you. Bring me your report no later than two days hence. The rest of you will escort me back with my heir, to Konoha."

Hiashi leapt upwards towards the tree road, and less than a second later the rest of the party blurred as they followed. The two assigned trackers began following the almost suspiciously clear trail left by the strange ambushers, a trail so obvious that a ninja could only have left it deliberately. A trail that could only be an invitation, or a trap.

"We're being followed," Sam whispered, her voice barely audible over the soft whir of her armour's servos, and the clunking of her alloyed feet against the forest floor's soft earth.

"Distance?" Director Cross whispered back through laboured breaths.

Sam consulted the motion detector HUD built into her armour. "Two hundred meters, at one-oh-six degrees. Approaching fast. They're on top of us."

"How the hell are they tracking us in the dark," Cross whispered. "I knew Phillips was insane to sell those motdet prototypes downstream. Soon every paramilitary with a hundred dollars to drop will have one." Cross pulled the laser pistol from his holster as he spun about to face the rough direction of their pursuers. "I don't see anything."

Despite Director Cross' attempt to commandeer the squad back in the clearing, Sam had volunteered to remain behind with the man as he set off the flare. There were rules about leaving civilians undefended in hostile territory, but with the doctor's team forging ahead alone, that was a shaky excuse at best. Vodyanov had accepted her request without complaint, and the director seemed to be glad of her company now.

Sam brought her plasma rifle up to sight down the barrel, tracking along the ground in the direction her motion detector was showing two now-stationary targets. "No contact. They should be right there."

Cross brought his own pistol up to sight down the barrel, though it was a futile gesture. Even the best of XCOM's marksmen would be lucky to hit a target at even fifty meters with that particular weapon. Despite its name, the standard issue laser pistol was much closer in function to a conventional sub-machine gun; useful as a side-arm, but only truly dangerous in close quarters.

The tension was broken when a figure blurred down to the ground from the trees above, landing gracefully less than fifty meters from the pair with little more than a swirl of leaves to suggest they had moved at all. The man's sudden appearance triggered Cross's barely contained panic, and a staccato of red flashes accompanied the burst firing of his weapon. A cluster of small fires flickered around deep holes burnt into one of the giant trees behind the figure, every lance of the director's weapon had been a clean miss.

"Hold your fire, Director!" Sam hissed, holding out an arm to push the man's gun arm down towards the ground.

"What's wrong with his eyes?" Cross hissed, something like hysteria in his voice. "He's a god damned sectoid hybrid. Shoot it, Sergeant! That's an order!"

Cross didn't wait before lifting his weapon to fire at the figure himself, only for Clifford to snatch the laser pistol effortlessly from his grasp. The man clutched incredulously at Sam's powered fist for a second, before muttering something about not being paid enough to deal with traitors and monsters, and turning to run past her into the forest, towards the North Easterly rendezvous.

"It seems that your last ally has abandoned you," the newcomer said, his voice carrying clearly across the eerie stillness of the forest.

Sam took a moment to make sure she'd understood correctly. It had been months since her last conversation in the language, and the man's accent was strange.

"He's just a consultant," she replied in broken Japanese. As Sam peered up into the canopy, she caught a glimpse of their second pursuer as he raced after the fleeing director. Her eyes widened as she realised the man in the canopy was leaping from branch to branch, making effortless jumps of twenty metres and up.

"Ah, a bureaucrat. I could tell," the dark haired man said, holding up a finger before him as he shifted into some kind of martial-arts stance.

"What's wrong with your eyes?" Sam asked bluntly. "You look like one of them, but the fact we're talking says otherwise."

"Wrong?" the man scowled in genuine anger. "How dare riff-raff such as yourself denigrate the most powerful perceptive dojutsu of any clan in the five nations! With these eyes I can see everything around me for a distance of three kilometres, through tree and stone. I can see the very chakra that suffuses your body!"

"Uh, okay," Sam replied, feeling a sense of surreality beginning to wash over her.

As if to demonstrate, the man flourished his right hand into a contorted shape and shouted: "Byakugan!"

Sam's target enhancement sensors noted the bulging veins around his eyes, but there seemed to be no other difference, besides a slowly growing expression of shock on his face.

"How- how are you doing that?"

Sam looked around briefly, perplexed. Apart from the gentle passive swaying of her suit's servos, she hadn't moved since the odd stand-off had begun.

"You're suppressing your entire chakra system! If you hadn't left such an obvious trail, the Byakugan would not have been able to track you. Could it be, you have developed a countermeasure to our clan's most noble dojutsu?"

Sam suppressed a sigh. "Listen, I have a gun." She waved her plasma rifle in a one-handed grip. "Do you want to start telling me where I am, and who you are?"

"I see," the man muttered, ignoring the question. "It's some property of your armour perhaps. Does it also block the gentle fist, I wonder?" The man shook his head free of the distraction, before continuing. "Stranger, whatever your business here, you are trespassing in the country of Fire, I order you to render yourself into my custody."

"Negative," Sam said, giving the standing response to attempts at capture. In the war XCOM was fighting, being captured was worse than being killed. She punctuated the point by raising her rifle to point at the man.

The figure's white eyes narrowed, and he seemed to blur, streaking through the intervening space to arrive directly in front of her, covering the entire distance in barely the time it had taken her to blink. Sam took a reflexive step backwards, but the man was already dancing around her, stabbing her with a succession of lightning-fast two-fingered jabs.

The strikes aimed at her stomach, her joints, her shoulders, her hips. Each attack landed with pinpoint precision, but being only a light strike, did little beyond annoy her. She noted that the suit's radiation sensors were fluctuating in the low percentages, which might have been dangerous to an unarmoured civilian, but was no threat through any alloy-based armour, and would be singularly unable to penetrate a highly shielded homoeostatic powered suit.

"Negative means no!" Sam shouted, swinging her servo-augmented arm at the speed of a snapping whip in an open-handed grasp at the man's throat, only to see the man blur fluidly out of the way of the strike, leaving her powered fist to snap closed on empty air.

The man slid backwards across the ground into a relaxed defensive stance, barely out of breath.

"I see, your armour does indeed block the strikes of my Gentle Fist. It would appear I am a poor opponent for you... but you should not underestimate me." The man reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out one of the black triangular throwing knives she'd noted on the dismembered party earlier that night. "While many of my clan are content to focus their studies on the exquisite art of our clan's taijutsu, I have studied more diverse techniques."

The man raised his knife to a ready position, and Sam was surprised to see a spark of electricity crackle along its edge. She barely had time to register the flicker of blue light before the man launched himself at her again, this time striking with the knife at what would traditionally be vulnerable, even crippling points for an exposed target. Blue electricity sparked with every impact, and the HUD of her suit registered the hits as low power directed-energy attacks.

"What is that, a taser?" she asked, swinging her hands and the butt of her rifle at her attacker as quickly as her suit's servos would allow. The artificial muscles which drove her suit's actuators could move and react more quickly than biological muscle, and she swung and grasped at the man with greater speed than any baseline human could hope to move, but he still deftly avoided each of her strikes. "What is this?" she asked in frustration, eventually giving up on hitting him, and letting the man prod the electrified knife at her without resistance.

After a dozen ineffectual strikes, the man leapt back again, throwing the knife at her in a parting gesture. The blade bounced off her helmet's faceplate with a quiet ping, and the he stood in a defensive posture, gasping.

"I see," he said between breaths. "Your armour also protects you against lightning-imbued kunai strikes. I have never before met an armour-specialist shinobi, and I must compliment you on your craft. However... you are unlucky that my ultimate jutsu is perfectly designed to bypass metal armour, and all defences. Whatever material your armour is lined with, it cannot withstand the power of my ultimate technique."

He began twisting his hands through a series of strange, almost ritualistic contortions.

"By combining my clan's taijutsu with the lightning techniques of Kumogakure, obtained during the war, I have developed a forbidden technique which can destroy your chakra circulatory system, even through armour. You are a stalwart opponent, but this fight is over."

He seemed to finish the odd sequence of hand movements with a flourish, and with the final form shouted "Raiton: Eight Trigrams - Sixteen Lances of Heaven!" With his exultation, the man began dancing around Sam in a blur, pausing every heartbeat to launch a lurid bolt of blue lightning at her from his extended fingertips.

"Two points! Four points!" the man gasped breathlessly as the azure arcs struck the skin of Sam's armour.

The suit's HUD flickered worryingly as the electrical strikes continued, and a quiet beeping tone alerted Sam that the system's heat-sink had risen above half capacity.

"Eight points! Twelve points!"

A low tone accompanied a warning that her right elbow servo was down to seventy-percent efficiency, and she could see smoke rising from several points on the surface of her armour.

"Sixteen points!" the man said, delivering a final four strikes, and sliding to stand in front of her, visibly exhausted, and if possible even paler than before.

"A few more points and that would have got annoying," Sam said. She raised her plasma rifle to point at the man, now seemingly helpless, but hesitated. The man had begun with simple jabs, maybe trying to hit nerve clusters, or make some other disabling attack. He'd steadily escalated after that, but for all she knew, he had only used lethal force in an attempt to break through her armour. At the last moment before firing, Sam shifted her aim several inches to the right, and pulled the trigger. The lurid green bolt of plasma shot past the man's head, impacting the trunk of a tree in the distance.

The entire trunk, several feet thick, exploded into shards of burning wood. With a unearthly creak, like the sound of a beast in pain, the tree listed, bent, then cracked, falling to the ground with a colossal crash and an impact that shook the dirt beneath Sam's feet. Her opponent was now lying on the ground, stunned into unconsciousness by the compression wake of the heated plasma bolt, his perfect hair scorched and smouldering.

She quickly knelt beside the man, using his dropped throwing knife to cut a square from his kimono, then nicking the flesh of his arm to steep the fabric in the blood welling from the shallow cut. She wasn't delivering a serious wound, certainly not life-threatening assuming he had access to antibiotics, but Sam had been debriefed by science teams too often to forget to take a biological sample. Without a lab, or even an indoor base, recovering the man for interrogation or forensic analysis seemed pointless, but his comparatively friendly approach not withstanding, his eyes had been suspiciously similar to those of a sectoid, and a blood sample was at least portable.

The electrical attacks the man had used had screamed 'cybernetics', but Sam wasn't quite ready to go digging around in the man's hands on the off chance they were implanted with capacitors. Doctor Vodyanov would have to make do with a dry blood sample and her suit's visual log, if it turned out she wanted anything at all.

With a start Sam remembered the director, and the second pursuer who had followed him into the forest. Standing, she turned to the North East, and began jogging in the direction that Cross had run.

Director Cross faltered as a pale figure in a white kimono dropped from the trees in front of him. A gust of wind seemed to whip up from nowhere as he landed, blowing his hair back, the yellow ribbon which tied it into a loose ponytail fluttered behind him.

The director swallowed heavily, slipping his hand into the pocket of his suit pants.

"You look just like the other one." Although Cross tried to speak in a calm, confident tone, his voice cracked, belying barely contained panic.

"Nani?" the figure asked, his head at an angle.

"So you are Japanese," Cross said, switching languages with the ease of a long time speaker, as he carefully opened the pen knife concealed in his pocket of his expensive suit pants.

"Japanese?" the figure asked. "I am Hyuga Tokuma, genin of Konoha, and you are my prisoner."

"Like hell!" Cross said, pulling the small knife from his pocket and holding it out in an amateur's stance.

"You are no ninja," Tokuma said, clearly seeing no threat in the man's posture. "Lay down your weapon, and come with me peacefully, or I will take you by force."

Cross slowly shook his head, feeling his guts turn to water as he contemplated what the immediate future held. The director's rank afforded him full knowledge of exactly what kind of fate awaited humans caught by the Threat and their allies. The invaders rarely even employed pain in their interrogation techniques, having means less blunt, and less clean, to bring about cooperation, and in time even loyalty.

Cross's brows crinkled in determination, and he lifted the small blade to hold against the pulsing artery of his own throat. "No. I know what your kind do to your prisoners." The white-eyed man didn't seem to know whether the director was bluffing, but then even Cross was uncertain.

"Indeed. You would die before allowing yourself to be captured? You have unusual dedication for a civilian," Tokuma said, cocking his head.

"I used to be a soldier," Cross said, grimacing.

"You need not be an enemy of my clan," Tokuma said, looking down to the ground.

"Like hell we're not, you're trying to capture me, you bug-eyed freak!" Cross shouted.

"Bug-eyed?" Tokuma seemed only mildly surprised by the remark. "These are the eyes of my clan. You are truly strangers here, if you have not heard of the Hyuga."

"Tell me about your clan," Cross said, slowly. "Are they all like you, hybrids?"

"I don't understand what you're saying, but every member of my clan shares the same eyes." As he spoke, Tokuma began taking idle steps, while turning to look around at the forest. His movements seemed casual, but every few steps brought him slightly closer to the director.

"A whole colony of chimeras right under our nose," Cross muttered to himself. "Who made you?"

Tokuma stopped and laughed out loud. "Who made me? What a surprising question. I suppose my mother and my father made me. Or do you mean who made the ninja you face? To that I would answer my jonin sensei. Or perhaps you mean who made me the man I am today? To which I would answer the enemies I have fought, those who I have sharpened the blade of my skill against."

"Your parents are like you as well?" Cross asked. "How long has your group been active?"

Tokuma seemed to consider remaining silent, before finally answering. "My people have been one of the strongest clans in Fire for over two hundred years."

"You're lying," Cross shouted. "I don't care what a few stoned archaeologists say, your kind haven't been on Earth for more a couple of-"

After edging closer for several seconds, Tokuma seemed to have passed some critical point where he could reach the director in a dash without giving the man a chance to act, and leapt into a blur of motion, holding up his hand in twisting shape as he moved.

"Byakugan!"

Tokuma's sprint ended as suddenly as it began, and the ninja slid to a stop, an expression of horror on his face.

"What's wrong with your body!" Tokuma shouted. "You're dead! Dead as you stand there!"

The small penknife shook in Cross's two-handed grip, now pointing at the white-eyed man, his earlier threat of suicide revealed as a bluff.

"Is this some technique?" Tokuma asked, trying to hide his alarm, but for the first time seeming to be the boy he was, still just a teenager. "Not a clone. I've heard of ways-" took a step backwards, then seeming to come to an uncomfortable decision, darted away into the darkness.

"Halt," Remy called.

Several metres behind him, Doctor Kate Vodyanov, Captain Shulz, Maud, Ben, and Mike instantly froze in place. After several hours of walking through the virgin undergrowth of the forest, they were all tired, and none of them were unhappy to stop, even if only for a minute.

"There's a crude trap here," Remy explained over his shoulder. "It looks like a trip wire, hooked up to a-" Remy picked his way carefully to the base of a nearby tree, "to a spring-loaded knife thrower. Huh. One second."

The engineer fished a multi-tool from his overall pockets and carefully snipped the wire strung to the trap's triggering mechanism. He spent a moment inspecting the trap itself, little more than an open wooden box lined with tightly coiled springs. A collection of the triangular throwing knives the natives seemed to favour were inserted handle-first into the springs, which were held back by hooks looped around the trigger, forming a crude, but effective trap. Effective, and simple to disarm.

Remy tipped the box, allowing the knives to fall to the ground, the flipped the trigger himself, discharging the now empty springs himself before collecting the blades back from the ground.

"Trap cleared, let's continue."

The second trap Remy encountered was a little more perplexing. It seemed more of a signpost than anything dangerous - a series of paper tags inscribed with unfamiliar calligraphy, but something in their placement set Remy's teeth on edge. Their positions made them difficult to spot, an unusual choice for what he might assume were signposts, but the way they were distributed across the trees, forming a perfect grid, reminded him of circle packing theory, and strategies for the optimal placement of anti-personnel mines.

"Hold up," he called back again. "We've got something different this time. I think I'm looking at markers for mine placement, or hidden explosives."

"Fuck," called Shulz. "Remy, pull back, we'll try and trigger them from a distance."

Remy jogged back to the main group, catching up with them as Shulz approached Ben. The fragile looking soldier had calmed down substantially after being sedated, but his frantic, terrified state of mind had given way to an almost somnambulistic stupor.

"Ben? Ben, you mind if I borrow this?" Shulz asked, placing a hand on the laser-sniper rifle slung across the soldier's back. Getting no response beyond a vacant glance, the captain carefully lifted the weapon's strap from around the man's neck, and raised it to point into the darkness. "Remy, where were these signs?"

Remy moved to Shulz's side and began pointing out the tags, only faintly visible through the gloom, despite their contrast against the dark trunks. Shulz raised the rifle to point at the ground below one of the marked trees, and began firing fast, accurate shots. The soil across the ground was raked up into clouds of dust and smoke, but there were no explosions. After repeating the experiment across the ground beneath several of the marked trees, Shulz paused and lowered the weapon.

"The vaporization from laser bolts kicks like a fucking mule where a beam lands. If there were vibration-trigger mines out there, they'd be flipping."

"Just a thought, Captain, try the tags themselves," Remy said. "Maybe they're knock-hole mines. Nail bombs would work just as well from above, easy to place, out of sight, people rarely look up."

Shulz re-focused her aim on one of the paper tags and pulled the trigger. There was no delay, the trunk instantly erupted in an explosion that sent a deep split running up and down the tree. Where the tag had been, a huge chunk of wood had been blown out, exposing the fresh white heartwood beneath.

"Well, fuck me. Well done Remy. Wonder how they would've been triggered."

Remy shrugged, and Shulz spent a noisy few minutes tracking down all of the tags within a short stretch of ground, clearing a path North East.

"Got to wonder why this particular route is so fucking special. We'd have been dead twice if we were civilians," Shulz said as she hooked the rifle's strap back around Ben's shoulders.

"I'm just worried about the explosives they didn't label," Remy said, resuming his spotter's position at the front of the group.

After several more minutes of walking, Remy hadn't spotted any more traps, primitive or explosive, but neither was there anything remarkable about the route. It continued just as it always had, until a short downward slope ended at the banks of a shallow river. As the group began looking for a point at which to ford the stream, Ben fell to his knees on the muddy ground.

"Dark..."

"Ben?" Maud asked, crouching beside the troubled man.

"Dark place..." Ben stood and scrabbled towards the edge of the river, sliding down the steep muddy bank before any of the scattered party could stop him. He hunted along the river bank, scratching at the mud and clay with his nails, and then vanished.

"Ben!" Maud cried.

The rest of the party began to gather around the woman, now staring down into the darkness of the river.

"What happened?" Doctor Vodyanov asked, catching up with Maud to peer down into the stream.

"Ben, he slid down the river bank and just disappeared."

The doctor quickly surveyed the dark river bank, before kneeling at the edge, one leg dangling down.

"Take my hand," the doctor said, reaching up towards Maud. "Lower me down."

The young engineer held the doctor's hand as she scrabbled down the river bank, grasping at exposed roots as she slid along the mud and wet clay. There, set deep into the side of the riverbank, was a low steel door, five feet tall, and covered in a patina of rust. The door was hanging open, revealing a dark interior.

"There's some kind of door here," Vodyanov called back up. "An underground room. Does anyone have a light?"

Maud pulled a wrist lamp from her belt and held it down for the doctor, who grasped it and fastened the velcro strap around her forearm. She switched it on, and stepped warily into the dark room.

The bright halogen beam swept across the room, revealing a central wooden table, large enough to seat six. Spartan wooden chairs were scattered around the room's outer steel walls, and every wall was covered in painted letters, looking like the offspring of ink brush calligraphy and a crop circle. Two doorways adjoined the room to Vodyanov's left and right, leading further into the darkness. Ben was there, curled up and lying peacefully beneath the table. Kate crouched for a moment to check the man's breathing, before moving on to explore the side rooms. Behind her, she heard footsteps as Maud slowly followed her inside.

As Vodyanov swept her lamp beam across the left room, she could make out steel trays, a hospital gurney, glass cabinets full of bottles and vials, and a large steel basin.

"This looks like some kind of infirmary," Vodyanov called back to the main room.

"Hold on, found a breaker," Maud called back, and a second later a naked bulb hanging from the infirmary's ceiling flickered into life, along with a directional lamp fitted to a swing arm over the gurney.

Vodyanov blinked in the bright light, and was able to make out more details. The sink was fed from a cistern fixed to the wall above it, rather than ordinary plumbing, and in the corner of the room she saw what she took to be a metal icebox. Several of the trays placed around the bed were loaded with surgical tools and small bottles, and there was a drip pole already loaded with a bag of some clear fluid stood next to the bed.

"It looks like the room has been pre-readied for a surgery," the Vodyanov said, lifting one of the bottles to examine the label, written in what looked like an unusual variant of Japanese. "There are drugs set out that won't survive long without refrigeration. I think someone is planning to use this room within the next twelve hours."

"Maybe those dismember-fucks we landed on were headed here," Shulz's voice then called from the main room. "I've got bunks in here, and some crates full of-" Shulz shouted from the furthest adjoining room, interrupted by the sound of splintering, "I've got bags of rice, dried meat, clothing, bottles of water, and cash. Fuck me, we're rich. Wait, maybe. These aren't Yuan, I don't know what the fuck they are. Has anyone heard of a 'Ryo'?"

"Ancient Japanese currency," Mike's voice came from the central room. "Wow, look at this place. It looks like some kind of bunker, but too shallow. An outpost? A hunting lodge?"

Vodyanov returned to the central room to see that Remy had followed the rest down the bank, and was standing in the outpost's exit, examining the steel door.

"But look at the rust on the door," the engineer said, sliding a hand over the pitted metal. "This place hasn't been properly maintained in years. The damp from the river's eaten away at the roof, and floor. I'm surprised this place is still structurally intact."

"How's Ben?" Vodyanov asked, looking beneath the table to find the soldier missing, before spotting him lying on one of the bunks in the far room.

"Not a medic, but his pulse and breathing have settled down a lot, I think he's just asleep," Maud said from an adjacent bunk.

"We've been walking for hours, we're all exhausted," Vodyanov said, moving to the infirmary sink and running the cistern to wash her face and hands, gasping in relief as the cool water washed away the dirt and sweat. "Remy," she began, drying her face on the sleeves of her tattered lab coat and heading back to the main room, "Rig one of the motdets for an audio alarm and hide it outside, I don't want to count on being overlooked by local forces, and we'll need to make sure Sam and the director don't pass us when they catch up."

Remy nodded and pulled out a motion detector, navigating menus on the small device's screen as he wandered back out into the night.

"And he just ran from you?" Sam asked. Beside her, Director Cross picked his way through the undergrowth, his once fine suit covered in mud and dust.

"That's what I told you. He looked terrified."

"He didn't try and... poke you?" the Sergeant asked, recalling the encounter with her own white-eyed opponent.

"No... he didn't come within striking distance. If someone hadn't stolen my weapon I would have been able to bring him down easily."

"You were panicking, Director. I've seen it before, plenty of times," Sam said, tiredly.

"One of those hybrids must have targeted me. So that's what a psionic assault feels like," Cross said.

"Right..." Clfford's voice dripped scepticism. It wouldn't be the first time she'd fought alongside someone who'd panicked due to psionic attack, but she wasn't yet even completely on board with the theory that the man had been a hybrid.

"You're just lucky it was me they targeted. If they'd hit you, you could have killed us both."

Clifford snorted in annoyance, but the noise didn't make it through her armour's vocalisation module to its external speakers. "I've got the highest psi-def on the base. It's why I'm a T2 sentry, off mission."

"You're a lot better to have around than that other one," Cross admitted. "Crazy son of a-"

"Ben's a fine soldier," Clifford said sternly, her suit mistaking her tone for a combat instruction and amplifying her voice's volume several times. "Smart, fast. He's just a little sensitive, all of the psionics are."

"If you knew what I know about the psionics program, you'd never let your guard down around him," the director said darkly.

A moment of silence passed, before Sam spoke up again. "It sounds like there's a river ahead. If it's below chest height, I'll wade through and you can ride my shoulder."

"Or we could follow it down until there's a crossing. There's no way Vodyanov's group would have tried to swim a river in the dark-"

A pair of figures stepped out from behind trees in front of them. Both were wearing tan shin-length pants and loose fitting beige shirts, and both were holding laser pistols at the ready. It took Sam a moment to recognize Remy and Maud out of their orange overalls.

"You finally caught up," Remy said, slipping his laser pistol back into the holster strapped to his waist. "Come on, we found a bunker. There's water, beds, clothes. We figure it as being that other group's destination - uh, you might struggle to get through the door in that armour, Sergeant. Try not to break anything."

Maud and Remy led Cross and Clifford to the bank just above the steel door to the bunker. Remy had to help the director down, but Sam just jumped, letting the servos of her armour absorb the landing, even as her alloyed feet sank deep into the mud by the river's edge. It was a struggle to fit the woman's bulky armour through the small hatch, and they found further difficulty as Clifford tried to squeeze out of the top of her armour in the limited space between her suit's wide neck opening and the low ceiling.

"I heard the next iteration of these are going to be front loading," Clifford said as she slithered out of the suit and carefully let herself down to the ground. "Where's Ben?"

Maud showed the sergeant to where Ben was sleeping on a bunk, and the director made a quick inspection of the base.

"What are you all wearing?" Cross asked, noting that both scientists and engineers had swapped their battered uniforms for loose fitting knee-length pants and tunics, all in muted earth tones and plain natural colours.

"Native dress, we think," Maud said. "We found them in a storage crate near the bunks, and since we're all ripe..."

"There's a basin in the infirmary you can use to clean up," Doctor Vodyanov said, "and we've left you some clothes out in there as well. I suggest you change."

It took several minutes for Cross and the sergeant to wash and change clothes, taking turns in the infirmary, and by the time they had cleaned up and eaten some of the salvaged laboratory rations, Vodyanov and Shulz had finished reviewing the video recording from Sam's helmet.

"So you two think these were Sectoid hybrids?" Vodyanov asked, looking at the fabric square stained with blood, the central stain rapidly turning brown.

"The director does, but I'm not so sure," Sam said, finishing the last crumbs of an unappetizing maroon brick, which the ration packaging had claimed was a chocolate brownie. "Too passive, too vocal. He was kind of cute actually. He shouted out his attacks like some kind of kid."

"The one who caught up with me said he was part of a clan of hybrids going back two hundred years. I can't see how they could've been hidden on Earth that long," the director supplied.

"I saw a microscope in the infirmary," Vodyanov said, standing with the fabric strip in hand. "As long as I can get blood cell resolution, I'll be able to confirm or deny whether they were hybrids." She took the sample into the infirmary, leaving the rest of the group to speculate around the table.

Vodyanov spent several minutes in the infirmary, leaving only once to collect the helmet of Sam's armour before returning to work. Remy was called upon to bring samples of the dried food from the outpost's storage crates for her to examine, and Sam was sent briefly outside to collect samples of river water, and leaves from the plants growing along the banks. The doctor was ashen faced when she returned to the central room, and sat down heavily at the table.

Vodyanov seemed to be about to speak several times, only to sag as if the words slipped away from her at the last moment.

"Well, what is it? Report!" the director said, in a voice no doubt honed over years of brow-beating base personnel.

"It's... contaminated," Vodyanov said at last, helplessly.

"The food?" Shulz asked, sitting up in alarm.

"The river water?" Sam asked. "Do I need to wash my hands?"

"All of it," Vodyanov said in a rapid exhalation. "The food from the crates, the water from the river, the plant life, the blood sample."

"With what?" Mike asked.

"If my guess is correct, with elerium radiation." Vodyanov held up her hand to forestall the wave of panicked questions she saw building up in the rest of the group. "The blood supply was human within my ability to check. Normal blood cells, normal T-cells, none of the hybridation or mediator cells I'd expect in a chimera. I'm as sure as I can be without gene sequencing equipment. But... while I was looking at the sample I twisted the microscope's brightness in the wrong direction - unfamiliar equipment - and when I looked at the sample unilluminated, I thought I could see a faint glow."

"Had you dyed the sample?" Mike asked. "It could have been a chemical reaction."

"I didn't, but it could have been," Vodyanov said. "That or bioluminescence. Under increased magnification I found that the glow was centred around the cell nuclei. At first I thought - well, it doesn't matter what I thought. I found the same radiation signature in the dried food, in the river water, and in the leaf samples that Sam brought me."

"And it was radiation? Everything's radioactive?" Shulz asked.

"I checked with the radiation sensor in Sam's helmet. It's crude, but all of the samples are giving off very low levels of elerium radiation. Now, that's not to say everything is 'radioactive'," Vodyanov forestalled Shulz. "Elerium radiation isn't ionizing, so it won't make us ill in the short term, and the radiation is faint, very faint, barely detectable with this equipment, but it does suggest the presence of widespread contamination by elerium crystal fragments. The kind of pollution you find surrounding downed UFOs, except-"

"Except you said it was in the river water?" Mike asked. "A river is constantly in motion. You wouldn't find the same concentration of contaminants in the water and the immediate surroundings if there were a single point of contamination. The pollutant would have needed time to reach equilibrium."

"Right," Vodyanov confirmed. "At this point I can't estimate how wide the contamination might be, but the concentration in the river water seems to be within an order of magnitude of that in the food supplies we found here. I'd need a more accurate sensor to be more specific, but the rice certainly wasn't grown in this region. Given the terrain I'd estimate a contamination zone of no less than fifty miles, call it six hundred square miles given an elliptical distribution, and possibly much greater."

The group were silent for a minute, each exploring their own interpretation of Vodyanov's discovery, each developing their own possibilities. The director spent the time quietly grinding his teeth, and eventually seemed to come to a decision.

"Have any of you read about the Kali Yuga project?" he asked, looking around at the other survivors, each one presenting the same blank face. "I don't know how far down the chain it was declassified," he said after they failed to speak up. "Kali Yuga was started two years into the war, right after we captured our first Sectoid commander, when we began to understand why they were here - what they really wanted."

"Resources," doctor Vodyanov said.

"Yeah, but more than that," Cross said, shifting in his seat. "The Threat's ultimate goal was nothing less than the sack of the Earth. They wanted our resources, they wanted our biomass, and they wanted a docile human workforce to help with the extraction. Kali Yuga was the research project that examined the possibility of our failure: If XCOM was defeated, if the Threat had unchecked access to the Earth, then what would be the immediate and long term consequences to Humanity."

"Did they decide we'd be completely fucked?" Shulz asked, swirling a bottle of distilled water in her hand, one of the last remaining uncontaminated bottles from the salvaged laboratory supplies.

"More or less," Cross said with a grim expression. "They projected that once the Threat achieved air superiority, they would use orbital surveillance records of our aircraft movements to plot the rough location of all underground XCOM bases and national military facilities. Unchallenged by our fighters, their heavy drop-ships would descend into the atmosphere and begin wide area kinetic bombardment, desolating terrain from fifty to a hundred miles around major population centres and any suspected military sites."

The rest of the group stared wide-eyed at the director, captivated, and horrified by the narrative he was laying out.

"Next, the domination ships would come. Medium-class cruisers with large ground troop compliments, to act as local administration and air support for occupying forces. There would probably be one domination ship assigned for every fifty thousand remaining humans, clustered around any cities tagged for survival during the first phase. Resource extraction would begin. Mines would be blasted open to extract uranium, tungsten, noble gases, worked by human slaves who would be constantly rotated out as they succumbed to the effects of radiation and industrial poisons. Giant coastal processing plants would extract deuterium from Earth's seas, dumping their waste back into the oceans, devastating its ecosystems. Harvesters would sweep up humans, animals, and plant life by the thousands of tonnes to be processed into food for the Threat's fleets and bases. The Kali Yuga team thought that even Earth's diminishing fossil fuels might be of interest to the Threat, sucked out of the ground and burnt in enormous turbine power plants, their energy concentrated into a more easily transported form."

"How does any of this relate to our current situation?" Vodyanov asked.

"Because Doctor, all of that alien activity - the domination ships which never touch down, the freight ships lifting millions of tons of resources into orbit - would generate catastrophic amounts of elerium pollution."

"The UFOs we've recovered have all had the same engine flaw," Shulz elaborated slowly. "The Threat's basic engine designs produce low-grade elerium dust as a waste product, and they just spew that shit out as exhaust."

"But our Firebird designs fixed that flaw," Remy interrupted. "You're saying the Threat couldn't fix their exhaust issue? We found it trivial, just add a charged collector."

Director Cross shook his head. "They don't see it as a flaw. Over decades and centuries of Threat activity, the atmosphere would become saturated with microscopic Elerium crystals. The result? Higher cancer rates, dramatically lower fertility rates, collapsing crop yields, and widespread biological mutations. This wasn't an unintended side effect to the Threat, it's a key part of their domination strategy. They want us to lose hope. Demoralization and eventual annihilation are fully intended design features of their engines."

"Those sick shit shitters," Shulz spat. "Fucking us up then just... using us as a dirty rag."

"Burning our civilization down and salting the earth," Cross agreed.

"You're suggesting this has happened!" Vodyanov said, looking up in alarm as she realized where the director's explanation was heading.

The rest of the group were silent, even Cross.

"It's the best explanation I can see," the director said finally. "If you tell me there's widespread -regional, possibly global- Elerium contamination of the food chain and water table? This is the only thing I've heard of that could get us there."

"What happens at the end of your story?" Maud asked, absently jabbing her index fingers together as she stared down at the table.

Cross took a deep breath before answering. "There was disagreement on the Kali Yuga team. Some thought that when every accessible resource had been mined, that the Threat would release an engineered virus, or ignite the atmosphere, or trigger a solar flare to scour the Earth clean of all life."

"A final 'fuck you'" Shulz suggested.

"A safeguard, against the small possibility of eventual Human resurgence, and later retribution," Cross said. "Others on the team thought that the Threat would simply leave, head for the next planet, and abandon humanity to die a lingering death. Though one scientist, Ankita Singh, she thought that Humanity would ultimately be spared; that after the Threat had left, after several thousand years on the brink of extinction, the elerium pollution would finally begin to settle - captured by water cycles and soil rotation - and what life that survived would find a way to adapt."

"I know that name," Vodyanov said, looking thoughtfully at her hands. "She was the anthropologist behind the time capsule project."

"The Svarga project," Cross nodded. "That was born of the findings out of Kali Yuga. Singh thought that at the end of the Naraka period -that was her name for the period between the end of occupation and the return of habitability- humanity would need guidance in order to crawl out of the pits of hell. Svarga was her way of preparing for that; burying caches of knowledge, seeds, technology, and cultural relics all around the world, in the slim hope that whatever was left of humanity would be able to use it to rebuild."

"You think that's it? That we're in the middle of this 'Naraka' period?" Maud asked.

"Wait, you're talking about time travel, fuck," Shulz said. "That's what you're talking about. You're saying we've just skipped a hundred years of human history, that the party's over and we've turned up in the middle of the fucking clean-up."

"I'll tell you what I've seen," Cross said, holding up fingers to tick off each item. "Mutated humans who say they've got history here, but can't possibly exist in the world as we know it. High levels of elerium contamination across a wide area, consistent with a Kali Yuga scenario. Evidence of a undocumented Japanese culture in what should be rural South East China. And add to that our doctor here was tampering with space-time when everything exploded."

"I'm going to see if there's any booze in those crates," Shulz said, standing and leaving the table.

Doctor Vodyanov wore a vexed expression as she looked up around the table, ignoring Shulz' departure. "Right now, our hypothesis has to be that the explosion during experiment moved us either through space, or through time. There's no fundamental law that would make either impossible, and there does seem to be evidence supporting the idea that we've been pushed forward several hundred, if not several thousand years. It's possible the occlusion fields we saw forming around the aperture generated local areas of time dilation, freezing us outside the flow of time, until they were disrupted somehow six hours ago."

"Oh hey, surgical alcohol," Shulz called from the infirmary.

"No," Mike said, speaking for the first time since the director's explanation began. "What about the voices? We heard Japanese voices before the explosion. It was probably the group we hit when we came through, but then it can't be time travel. It would mean information had to travel backwards through time, which would make it possible to create a paradox. We must have just been displaced physically."

"Unless the Novikov self-consistency conjecture is true," Vodyanov said, placing her hands flat on the table with deliberate slowness. "In which case a closed time-like curve could exist without generating a paradox."

"But we explicitly weren't dealing with a wormhole," Mike insisted.

"We don't really understand what the aperture was," Vodyanov countered. "In hindsight, a linear outward aperture could have acted as a Tipler cylinder. It would explain how we remained static in space on a rotating Earth. The aperture was anchored to the gravity well, so-"

"You can't achieve Tipler time-travel without introducing negative energy, which eliminating the need for was the entire point of the project," Mike said, and soon afterwards the discussion degenerated into a shouting match between the two scientists, Mike's congenial attitude, and Vodyanov's quiet professionalism both decaying into heated debate.

Director Cross stood and wandered away to join Shulz on the floor of the infirmary, and moments later, Remy slammed his notebook computer closed and followed with Maud at his heels.

Half an hour passed with no slowing of the debate between Vodyanov and Mike, until Director Cross lurched into the infirmary doorway, smelling faintly of alcohol, and holding a bundle of papers in one hand.

"We found an calendar," he slurred. "Not Gregorian, something local based on lunar months. Some guys called 'Cloud' are calling it the year three-hundred-forty, but it's got eclipse schedules labelled," Cross wagged the papers importantly as he spoke. "We cross ref'nced with an orrery simulation. It's the year seven thousand, five hundred and eighty six."

"Seven thousand, five hundred and eighty six," Shulz shouted from the infirmary, a hysterical giggle edging into her voice.

The director threw an unfamiliar looking calendar down onto the table. It showed an entire year divided into lunar months, with lunar phases, notable planetary appearances, and partial eclipses labelled in detail, and there were several pages folded back behind it for previous and subsequent years.

"Oh," he added, swaying slightly. "We also got pictures of some kind of dance moves, a stack of maps, and a 'Bingo Bukku'," he said, throwing down a small soft-cover book and a several rolled pieces of paper onto the table, before staggering across into the far room and collapsing on a bunk.

Mike and Vodyanov's eyes locked, each reflecting the well of sadness building behind the other's.

"We lost the war," Mike whispered, finally.

"Everyone we knew..." Vodyanov said, her voice tight and strange.

"Everything we ever built," Mike said, lifting his hands to cover his mouth.

"It could be a hoax?" Vodyanov tried, but it was clear from both of their expressions that neither believed it.

Finally, reluctantly, Mike picked up the small book and began to read.


	3. Chapter 1-3

The scroll rose up from the desk to hover menacingly in the air. As it floated, unsupported, a white glow began to exude from the rolled paper, and the open flap of the scroll unfurled into the shape of a sneering lower lip.

"No- that sinister chakra, it can't be!" Hiruzen Sarutobi said, horror showing on his face as he sat upright, alert in his chair.

"That's right, Hokage-kun, you will never finish me," The scroll mocked, its voice deep and threatening. A serpentine tongue rolled out of the open paper flap and curled wetly as the scroll floated inexorably towards the old man.

"Stay back, Paperwork-san! You will never be leader of this village, you lack the will of fire!"

"Hahahaha," the scroll mocked, "When will you wake up, old man."

Hiruzen raised one hand in the tiger seal, held his other to his lips and exhaled. His breath whipped into a torrent of flame and engulfed the scroll, but something was wrong - the paper seemed untouched.

"Hahahaha, I am fire resistant, old man. Old man. Old man. Wake up, old man."

"No-"

"Wake up old man!" a blonde boy shouted, slamming his hands on the polished wood of the hokage's desk.

Hiruzen's eyes flickered open, and he lifted his head from the stack of papers where it had drooped several minutes before. He blinked wearily as he looked around his office, and drew a wrinkled brown hand across his mouth. Finally his eyes began to focus on the fuzzy yellow shape standing in front of his desk.

"Naruto?" Hiruzen asked.

The boy gave Hiruzen a wide grin.

"What are you doing here, Naruto?" Hiruzen asked, looking around for any sign that one of his bodyguards might have tried to stop the boy.

"'Cause! Baa-chan kicked me out!" Naruto shouted, grimacing, before his face twisted suddenly into a wide grin. "So I'll live with you now, okay old man!" The boy accompanied his grin by jabbing his hand forward and giving Hiruzen a thumbs-up.

"Naruto..."

The sound of running came beyond the open door the hokage's office.

"I'm sorry, Hokaga-sama, he just ran past," said a blonde woman in a form-fitting white kimono, leaning breathlessly against the door frame.

"It's okay, Izumi, but please tell Tatami-san no more unexpected visitors," Hiruzen said, waving the woman gently away.

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Izumi said, before retreating and closing the door behind her.

"Old man..." Naruto began, "Why were you asleep?"

"Hn, getting old is no joke, Naruto-kun," Hiruzen said wearily, grimacing as he remembered his dream, and looked down at the stack of papers he'd fallen asleep against.

"Ehhh you must be a thousand years old, Jiji-sama," Naruto said in a reverent tone.

Hiruzen barked a laugh. "It feels that way sometimes, but I can always rely on people like you to make me feel young again."

The pair were interrupted by the sound of raised voices coming from beyond the hokage's office door.

"Out of my way, fool," came a haughty voice.

"Now, now, is that any way to speak to one of the elite guard platoon? I have orders to allow no one to pass, Hyuga-san."

"How dare you, imbecile! You have three seconds to move from my path-"

Hiruzen leapt from his desk and flew across his office, swinging the door open to reveal a blue haired shinobi in a grey coat and chunin vest blocking the way of a meticulously groomed Hyuga.

"Ah, Hiashi-san. I'm sorry for the delay," Hiruzen said.

Hyuga Hiashi blinked slowly and nodded in acknowledgement of the apology. "Do not mention it, hokage-sama, however, I am here on an important matter."

"Of course," Hiruzen said, turning to the blue haired chunin. "Iwashi, please escort Naruto out, and then see that we are not disturbed - unless a clan head happens to visit!" he added.

"But old man! I don't know where we live yet!" Naruto complained.

"Why don't you go and see Izumi at the front desk, Naruto. She'll sort everything out."

"Yes!" the blonde boy cried, leaving at a run to track down the hokage's secretary, as the chunin bodyguard chased after him.

"Please come in, Hiashi-san. Have a seat. Can I offer you any refreshments?" Hiruzen said, closing the office door and leading the Hyuga back towards the office's central desk.

"That won't be necessary, Hokage-sama," Hiashi said, taking a seat opposite the old man across the desk. "I'm here to discuss certain recent events, and how our village will respond to them."

Hiruzen's expression grew grave. "The betrayal."

"Yes," Hiashi said simply, scrutinizing the hokage's expression with implacable white eyes, gauging its depth. Seeming to find the man's concern sincere, the Hyuga clan head relaxed his posture.

"To enter our village under the banner of truce, and disgrace themselves in this way," Hiruzen slowly shook his head. "This would not have happened under A's leadership."

"And yet it has happened, and we must respond," Hiashi said, his voice deceptively calm.

The hokage sighed tiredly, and turned to gaze at the swaying leaves through the windows of his office.

"What would you have me do, Hyuga-san? The perpetrator is dead, his crime punished, and lady Hinata recovered."

"The theft was committed by the head ninja of their village! All of Kumogakure is complicit in their crime."

"And you would have me punish their entire village? Even if we were positioned to do so, I would not agree," the hokage said, turning back to the clan head.

"And what of the insult? Is that to be ignored as well? You do not have the right to deny me my retribution for that," Hiashi said.

"And you do not have the right to dictate our policy toward other villages, or drag us into yet another war!" Hiruzen snapped back.

"Of course, my clan will not act without the blessing of the village," Hiashi said, his posture relaxing minutely. "But you should understand that by denying me restitution for this grave insult to my self and my clan, you take that burden upon yourself."

The hokage's eyes narrowed, and his voice grew gravelly. "Careful, Hiashi. You aren't the only one who feels the snake coiling in his gut at the thought of what they have done. I asked for suggestions, but you have provided me with none."

The clan leader folded his hands together in his lap. "They must make public restitutions. The other three great nations must be told of Kumogakure's treachery, and they must pay greatly to satisfy our dignity."

Hiruzen frowned. "This I can not do. We are in a precarious position, weakened by war, and with the starving dogs we kicked back still circling in the shadows. Whatever else has happened, we now have a treaty with Kumo, and the rest of the world will think twice about testing us - now that they can no longer count on a second front to split our response."

"So we will remain silent, label their crime a secret, and hold our tongues for their sake?" The Hyuga head still seemed relaxed, but there was a steel in his voice which hadn't been there before.

"Hyuga-san, all I ask is this: give me some time. Messages must be sent, meetings made. I do not take an attempt to steal the future of this village lightly. I promise you, I will make them pay as dearly as I can, but we can not afford an open conflict now."

Hiashi merely stared at the hokage, his pale, expressionless eyes giving nothing away as to his emotions.

"How is lady Hinata recovering?" the hokage asked, after an awkward silence.

"She is upset, but is recovering well, Hokage-sama. The thieves gave her a drug to ensure her silence, and she was unconscious for most of their flight from Konoha."

"And she remembers nothing of her mysterious rescuers?"

Hiashi's eyebrows knitted together in a pensive expression. "No. She has reported vague memories of voices, but could not report anything said. What of the scouts, have they traced that group?"

"They followed the trail to the banks of a river, where all sign and scent vanish. It seems like they boarded a boat, or waded beyond that point to defeat our tracking attempts."

"And no sign of who they were?" Hiashi asked.

The hokage shook his head. "Given the tracks they left, they could hardly have been shinobi. I am troubled that such a strange group were so close to Konoha, but they could simply have been a civilian party travelling with a samurai guard."

"And what of the reports of my clansmen? At least one was capable of staying hidden, and incapacitating a chunin with a raiton technique. A second was capable of suppressing his chakra until it was undetectable, and that samurai's defense was no ordinary armour."

"Whoever they were, they had a golden opportunity to seize the fabled Byakugan while letting Kumogakure take the blame, and yet it seemed they saw to the girl's safety. Weren't you only able to find her so quickly because of efforts they took to alert you?"

"Still, it does not seem wise to leave this mystery unsolved."

"I have arranged four C-rank missions to track and identify them over the coming week. I doubt they are still in the area after being attacked by your clansmen, but if they are, we will find them."

... ||| ...

Yoshiko stared at the room through narrowed eyes, taking in every detail; the chalk dust marks marring the surface of the small desk; the scattered paper covered in abortive attempts at storage seals; the practice notes written in simple cyphers; the leather weapons belt neatly filled with blunted training kunai; a small pile of books on chakra focusing; a beloved toy half hidden beneath the pillow of the bed. Every detail was witnessed, analysed, and recorded for all time.

Behind Yoshiko, a timid knock came at the bedroom door.

"Come in," Yoshiko said, continuing to assess the state of the room.

The door swung open, and a boy stood in the entrance. He looked no more than fourteen, the shock of black hair common to his clan was brushed backwards and tied with a simple cord, the boy's eyes were hidden behind black goggles, and the high collar of his white coat concealed his mouth.

"Uchiha-sama?" the boy asked.

"Ah, Aburame-san, come in," Yoshiko said, gesturing for the boy to enter. Beneath Yoshiko's heavy lidded eyes, the three black tomoe spun and retreated, his eyes reverting to their inactive state.

"You were using your sharingan to record the scene?" the boy asked.

"Hn. These eyes have seen one hundred visions of heaven and hell, all of them burned in to my memory. I hope we find this child before he becomes another thing I regret seeing."

The Aburame reached up to adjust his goggles as he eyed the investigator, marking the grey hair, lined face, and constantly narrowed eyes. "Uchiha-sama, are you Uchiha Yoshiko - the legendary squinty detective of Konoha?"

Yoshiko's face drooped in dismay. "I hate that nick-name."

"I apologise Squinty-sama," the Aburame said, bowing slightly. "I am Aburame Shiori. Please just call me Shiori."

"Yes, and please call me Yoshiko," the investigator insisted benevolently.

"I am honoured, Squinty-sama."

Yoshiko drew his hand across his brow. "Anyway, Shiori-san. How much has your father told you about the situation?"

"He told me I would come here today and assist the military police with an investigation into a missing genin. I found this unusual, as the Konoha military police do not usually involve outsiders in their cases. Conclusion, this is not an ordinary investigation."

"That's right, Shiori-san. Ishihara Takashi, went missing yesterday morning, nobody has seen him since then. Although this may seem like a simple case of a missing child, I have noticed that more and more young genin and chunin are disappearing on missions in the last several months, even on simple scouting or message carrying missions in friendly territory. There are as many as forty young shinobi missing in mysterious circumstances - the highest rate of loss since the end of the war."

"You think this child's disappearance is related?" Shiori asked.

Yoshiko closed his eyes completely for a moment and nodded. "I think this missing boy is the thread we will pull to unravel the tapestry. Of course, it could be unrelated, but I have an instinct about this."

"As expected of a legendary detective, Squinty-sama."

Yoshiko's eye twitched.

"Ah, but Squinty-sama," Shiori began, raising his index finger, "Why did you request help from the Aburame?"

"I heard your family is skilled at tracking and espionage. I want your help in finding this boy."

"Ah. Usually my clan must prepare a target in advance," Shiori said, reaching up to straighten his collar. "We typically lack the ability to track someone we have not before encountered."

"You really need to work on your tells, Shiori-san, but you can relax, I know about the limitations of the kikaichu and shokaichu. I'm more interested in your family's particular speciality."

"He- he told you about that technique?" Shiori stuttered.

"We're old friends, ever since I helped to clear him of an unjust accusation," Yoshiko said, his slitted eyes crinkling as he smiled. "When I mentioned my problem to him, he took some talking around, but he eventually admitted that he knew a technique which might help me."

"Tracking a subject is not that technique's primary purpose, Squinty-sama. My father surely must have told you it was designed as a high level assassination technique."

Yoshiko's eyes drooped and he nodded. "He seemed sure of your ability to alter the technique in order to help me."

"I see. I will try not to let him down," Shiori said.

"Good. I'm going to speak with the parents now," Yoshiko said, the pupils of his eyes spinning into a red circle as he turned towards the bedroom door. "Please stay out of the way while I interview them."

"Wait, Squinty-sama!" Shiori said.

Yoshiko turned to look at the Aburame, and found him standing with his index finger raised in the air, his other hand wrapped around a wooden toy ninja doll. The figurine had finely milled hinges at the joints, and a tiny Konoha hitai-ate was carved across its featureless face.

"I found a clue," Shiori said, triumphantly.

"Oh? Twelve degrees of movement!" Yoshiko said, bending down to examine the doll and adopting an impressed tone. "Well, it's a high quality toy, but it's not a clue."

"But the victim was a genin, and the item seems like it is new. Who would think to give him a doll of a shinobi as a toy if he was a shinobi himself?"

Yoshiko's eyes narrowed until they were almost closed. "Don't call him a victim just yet. And he is only six years old! He's still a child, even if they did put a kunai in his hands. You could say he never stopped playing ninja, we just gave him real weapons to do it with."

"Y-yes, Squinty-sama," Shiori looked down at the doll, disappointed.

"Come on, let's speak with the parents."

Yoshiko led the pair out of the cramped bedroom, down a narrow corridor and into a dusty living room, where a tired looking middle aged couple were sitting on a low couch. The woman had long black hair which dangled lifelessly around her shoulders, her brown eyes looked sunken and afraid. Her husband, a thick set man with greying hair at his temples and several days worth of stubble, looked more angry than upset, and eyed Yoshiko with barely concealed hostility. Yoshiko's red-black eyes took it all in, processing every subtle facial twitch, every half-formed expression, every ghost of an emotion.

"Mr and Mrs Ishihara. Sorry to trouble you at this difficult time, but I have to ask some questions."

"Just get on with it, then get out!" The man jeered, waving his hand towards the front door at the far end of the corridor.

"Kenta, please, he's trying to find our son," the woman pleaded.

"You, I'll speak how I want in my own house," he slurred.

Yoshiko turned to shoot Shiori a glance, though the Aburame's dark goggles and high collar revealed little about his reaction to the exchange.

"Mrs Ishihara, when did you last see your son, Takashi?" Yoshiko asked, turning to the tired looking woman.

"Oh, it was yesterday morning," she said, shakily.

"So about thirty hours ago?" Yoshiko asked.

"Y-yes. I was leaving to go to my job in the service district, and I kissed his forehead, and made him promise to eat a good lunch, and not to train too hard. I gave him a ten Ryo note - as a treat, and when I left he was smiling. He was gone when I came home."

"You gave him money? He makes more money than you do! He should be giving you money!" the man yelled. Mrs Ishihara looked like she was about to start crying.

"Mr Ishihara, what about you, when did you last see him?"

"Ah, about the same time I guess," the man said, gesturing vaguely.

"And you were working that day as well?" Yoshiko asked.

"Nah," the man said, leaning back and folding his arms.

Mrs Ishihara pulled her hands away from her face. "Kenta is between jobs right now, he was out looking for work during the day."

"Yeah, times is hard," the man said. "I was out there, walkin' the streets. There's no work for someone like me, everything's set up for the ninjas. Ninjas this, and ninjas that. And now the kid's gotten into it."

"I see," Yoshiko said, gazing steadily at the man through slitted eyelids. "And how are things at home between you two and your son?"

Mrs Ishihara looked quickly down at the floor, and Mr Ishihara unfolded his arms and leaned forward.

"Things were great!" the man said, gesturing wildly again. "We loved that boy, loved him! I treated him like my own, no matter how ungrateful he got."

"Like your own?" the Aburame interrupted, stepping forward and adjusting his goggles.

"Great, you're one of the bug freaks," the man spat. "Don't leave any infestations around here, you hear!"

"Kenta isn't Takashi's birth father," Mrs Ishihara began shakily. "Takashi's real father died in the war. He wasn't a shinobi, but he fought all the same, when his caravan was attacked by the Cloud. Since then, it's been hard for a woman alone, but I'm l-lucky to have found Kenta, who asked me to be his wife."

Shiori raised his hand and the tip of his index finger appeared above the cuff of his white coat. "You seem unconvincing, Ishihara-san. Did you perhaps marry your husband out of desperation, and now regret it?"

"Ha ha," Yoshiko laughed half-heartedly, placing a hand on Shiori's shoulder. "Why don't you wait for us outside, Shiori-san-"

"What..." Mrs Ishihara began. During Shiori's question, her eyes had lifted to the small wooden figurine still held in the Aburame's hand. "What is that, ninja-san?"

Shiori held up the doll. "This is a toy, taken from beneath Takashi-san's pillow."

"W-where did it come from? I've never seen it!"

"Ah, sure you have," Kenta waved. "It's just his little toy. A boy his age shouldn't be playing with dolls."

"But where did he get it?" she persisted.

"I gave him it," Kenta said. "I give him all kinds of things. Little ungrateful brat."

"But it wasn't even his birthday yet, and why would you get him a ninja doll, he was already a real ninja!" she said, almost in tears again, fixating almost hysterically on the insignificant detail, as if such details were an adequate distraction from her pain and fear.

Shiori stepped carefully over to the woman, and handed her the doll. She stared at it for a moment, tears welling up and beginning to flow freely from her eyes.

"I don't want it! I don't know it!" She flung the doll away towards the far well of the room, buried her face in her hands and began weeping.

Yoshiko closed his eyes tightly. "I'm sorry," the old detective said. "I should leave."

"Yeah, you should!" Kenta shouted. "And take the bug freak with you!"

Yoshiko straightened and turned, his eyes still seemingly closed, and headed towards the building's only exit. Shiori followed quickly behind him, and once they were outside, Yoshiko looked up at the sky and sighed, opening his eyes wide for a moment to gaze up at the light grey clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon, before the three tomoe of his sharingan spun, and retreated into large, dark pupils.

Finally, Yoshiko let his eyes open fractionally, and turned to Shiori. "When you can start that technique?"

"Hm. I will need to return to the compound to plan, this will take three hours. Then we will need to return here to extract a sample of the mother's blood. After that I will begin the technique, though it will take fifty hours to come to fruition."

"Two days is a long time when a boy is missing," Yoshiko said, squinting at Shiori.

"It can't be helped, Squinty-sama. That is how long it will take for the clutch to reach maturity. Even when the hunt begins, it is not guaranteed to succeed. To avoid danger to the target, I will have to breed a much smaller swarm, which will lower their chances of finding him."

"Do what you can. I'll continue to investigate the old fashioned way. Maybe I'll get lucky."

"Of course, Squinty-sama. I expect in the end, you won't need my help."

"You've already been a help, you were right about the figurine," Yoshiko said, giving Shiori an appraising stare.

Shiori nodded modestly. "Squinty-sama, the father, he was lying."

"Yeah," Yoshiko agreed. "He was half drunk, and his story was full of contradictions. Shiori, I'll meet you back here in three hours to help you extract a blood sample."

Shiori simply nodded, turned, and leapt upwards, towards the roof of a nearby store, from there to leap from building to building East, towards the Aburame compound. Yoshiko also jumped up to a nearby roof, but rather than heading off along the roof-road, crouched behind a low wall to settle in, and watch the house of the Ishiharas.

... ||| ...

Victor Cross walked for hours that morning. Eight of those hours were spent tracking through the mud and light undergrowth that coated the forest floor, retracing the route they'd stumbled through during the night before. The going was a lot easier once the sun rose over the clouded horizon to cast a thin, grey light, and the path to the South West had been beaten and partially cleared by his group's first pass through, the crushed ferns and broken branches serving as way points in the absence of a compass or map.

Victor's only surprise on the journey came when he reached the site where the group of survivors had arrived the previous night. It had been cleared of bodies, and parts, and the little girl they'd left to the mercy of the night were nowhere to be seen. The only evidence that anything had happened there at all was a small circle of scorched ground at the centre of where they'd landed.

The director performed a brief search of the area, looking for any salvageable weapons or equipment that they'd missed in the dark the previous night, but found nothing, and resumed his path to the South West. The direction was harder to find without the well marked trail of their initial flight, and he briefly regretted not bringing one of the heavy motion detectors, with its in built compass and navigational software, but all of his concerns were banished when he stumbled out of the tree line, and onto a wide dirt road.

The road was crude and uneven, more the product of decades of feet than of any concerted attempt at construction, and ran North to South through the forest. The soft earth of the road was gouged by cart tracks in places, and there were the ghosts of footprints at its edges, but the gentle sway of the road as it wound around large trees and hidden ditches limited visibility along its length to less than a mile, and there was neither sight nor sound of activity along the parts the the director could see.

"They were headed North East, so if they came from a settlement, that'd place it South," the director muttered to himself, pulling a plastic water bottle from a canvas belt pouch and draining the last mouthful of water.

The director was no longer wearing his expensive suit of the night before, having changed into some of the loose-fitting clothes salvaged from the underground outpost. Loose shin-length brown pants hung around his waist, and a sweat-stained olive green tunic was wrapped around his upper body, tied closed with a strip of linen. His polished leather shoes had been exchanged for cloth foot wrappings and a pair of raised wooden sandals. The high platforms of the geta had done little to keep his feet dry through the deep mud of the undergrowth, but they'd certainly provided more grip on the uneven surface than his leather-soled shoes had the previous night, and they were more than enough to keep his feet away from the road's soft earth.

Victor tossed the now empty plastic bottle into the undergrowth at the side of the road, before turning and starting to follow the road South. The belt pouch still bulged with the presence of a lab issue laser pistol, but the polymers and alloys which made up the weapon weighed next to nothing compared to a conventional pistol, and the director did not feel comforted by the insubstantial presence of the weapon, which had always felt more like a toy than a real gun to his hands.

Victor had only been walking along the road for a few minutes when he heard the sound of wheels trundling along the ground, backed by a quiet murmur of voices. He turned to look behind him, and only had to wait a second before a cart pulled around a bend of the road, pulled by a single oxen - though it was larger and shaggier than any ox Victor had ever seen. The cart was surrounded by a small group of men and women dressed in a similar style to the director, and a white-haired teenager wearing a metal-plated headband over a green hat.

"Hey, stranger! Are you headed to Konoha!" the driver of the cart cried out, standing up in his seat to wave at Victor.

"Huh, they look human," the director muttered to himself, before lifting his hand and giving a hesitant wave in reply. "Uh- Sure! Sure I'm going to Leaf!"

"Well, join us!" the man shouted. "We're quite close, but the road can be dangerous, and we have a strong ninja to protect us!"

"Uh, good!" the director shouted, before muttering, "Ninja? What the fuck?"

As Victor paused to let the larger group catch up, he noticed that the white haired teenager was carrying an enormous and ridiculously impractical shuriken strapped across his back, and seemed to be smiling while heading directly for him.

"Hi, Stranger-san," the boy said, grinning and waving politely as he approached. "I'm Mizuki."

"Call me Fuyuki, Yagi Fuyuki," the director said, forcing a smile in return.

The young Mizuki laughed awkwardly. "Aha, you're not from around here, eh Yagi-san."

The director faked a laugh in return, and took up a place walking beside the boy. "No, I'm from the Land of Hot Water, how could you tell?" Victor said, giving the name of the country printed on the passports they'd discovered in the crates the previous night. He turned his head to look intently at the teenager, gauging his reaction. The documentation from the hidden outpost was presumably sound, but with no knowledge of the surrounding culture, the XCOM survivors had no way to know how believable it would be, and Victor felt his pulse quicken as he waited for a reaction.

The teenager turned slightly and gave the director a piercing sidelong stare, before his face softened into a smile. "Oh? You've come a long way, Yagi-san."

"Yeah, I wanted to see some of the world. The Land of Hot Water is nice and all, but there have to be more interesting sights. That's why I'm headed to Leaf," the director said, rubbing at a bead of sweat that had formed on his temple. With the test seemingly passed, Victor allowed himself to relax.

"Konohagakure is a wonderful place, but we don't get many tourists! It is a shinobi village after all," Mizuki said with a laugh. "How ever did make it?"

"Well," the director began, gesturing at the path uncertainly, "the road leads right here."

Mizkuki grabbed his stomach and laughed as if Victor had made a great joke. "Well, Yagi-san, you were very lucky to get this far. The roads are patrolled all of the way up to Kawa-Ku Village after all, and most of the false trails are covered in death traps."

"Death traps?" Victor asked, turning to the boy with only partially feigned shock.

"Oh yes," Mizuki said, smiling. "Stake pits, kunai launchers, acid gas traps, even simple bear traps. If you'd taken a wrong turn you could have stepped on a filth-encrusted wooden spike and been stranded for days as you slowly succumbed to infection. A gas trap would have melted the outer layer of your eyes and mucous membranes, leaving you blind and gasping for breath. Hm, I think your cleanest death would have been triggering a kunai trap, it would have killed you in mere seconds."

Victor made an effort to appear horrified, but began to reappraise the boy. The boy who called himself Mizuki still seemed friendly, but the teenager almost appeared to be enjoying the lurid images he was painting, and the reaction he was apparently provoking from Victor.

Mizuki took in the carefully constructed expression of horror on the director's face. "Next time, you should really hire an escort from Kawa-Ku, or wait for one of the scheduled merchant parties."

"Maybe I should hire a ninja like you to escort me on my return trip, just to be safe," Victor said.

"Hm, you could hire me personally. Ask for Mizuki at the dispatch office."

"I'm really looking forwards to seeing Konoha," the director said after a few moments of silence. "Are there any places of interest you recommend?" The director asked.

"Hm. You should definitely visit the Hokage monument," Mizuki said thoughtfully. "It's our greatest sight. Our library is one of the most well stocked in the Elemental Nations, even the parts open to civilians, and the view from the top of Hokage Rock is spectacular. Though, not everything is suitable for sight-seeing. If you begin to see clan symbols on the walls, you should turn back, since the clan compounds are off limits to civilians, and you should stay clear of the training grounds, they can be quite dangerous."

"Clans?" Victor asked, curious. "Like the Hyuga?"

"Hm, yes. The Hyuga are one of our most powerful noble clans. I can see their fame stretches all the way to Hot Water."

"Are all of the clans... uh, different? From ordinary people?" Cross asked.

"Oh? Have you met one of the Hyuga, Yagi-san?" Mizuki asked.

"Not exactly. I saw a man with strange eyes as I passed through a village in the North," Victor said, confidently. "I asked about him, and someone mentioned the Hyuga of Konoha."

"They do get around, and their distinctive appearance probably makes them the most famous clan, but several groups in Konoha have bloodline limits."

"Bloodline limits, I see," the director nodded, filing away the local term for 'genetic abnormalities'. "I think the person said the one I saw was a 'genin'?"

"Hm, like me. The genin are our lowest ranking shinobi," Mizuki said.

"Lowest? But the one I saw showed impossible levels of strength and speed?" Victor said, letting the genuine disbelief lingering from his encounter the previous night bubble to the surface.

"Ha, now you are trying to flatter me," Mizuki laughed.

"I'm serious," Victor said, smiling. "If that's what the lowest of you can do, what are the highest capable of?"

Mizuki grinned as if the question amused him. "The abilities of our jonin are a village secret. You should be careful who you ask questions like that, Yagi-san. If anyone were to suspect that were a spy, you would be taken to Konoha's intelligence division, and there tortured for days on end by people who have elevated human agony and despair to an art form," Mizuki gave Victor a side-long stare as he spoke, the corner of his mouth still turned up into a smirk, despite the subject matter.

Victor grimaced and resumed walking in silence, feeling increasingly wary of the teenager. Despite his friendly demeanour, he seemed to be harbouring something of a sadistic streak. After almost half an hour of walking, the group rounded a corner in the road and the settlement finally came into view.

The village, or perhaps city would be a better term, was surrounded by an enormous wall made from dusty red-brown stone, or perhaps concrete. The wall looked to be upwards of sixty feet high, topped with a crude roof made from wooden planks which formed a kind of precarious battlement. A huge gate was set into the wall, engraved with Japanese characters and a large spiral pattern that seemed to be given pride of place in the adornments. The entrance was fitted with two thick wooden gates, standing open, and guarded by a group of men and women in green flak jackets. One of the men stepped forward to greet the group of travellers, and a gray wolf the size of a bull moose stepped up behind him.

"Holy fuck! What the hell is that!" Cross hissed as he saw the enormous dog.

Mizuki clutched his stomach and gave another loud laugh. "That's a ninken, one of the ninja dogs."

"Ninja-dogs, huh. Right," Victor said, pausing to stare uncertainly at the animal. The rest of the travelling party slowly rolled past him, seemingly unconcerned.

"Don't worry, Yagi-san," Mizuki said, resting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "They're perfectly well trained. They wouldn't hurt any innocent civilian. Of course, they can easily detect deception by scent, and will bite the head off a spy at the first sniff."

Victor turned an unimpressed grimace towards Mizuki, who simply laughed and headed for the gate, greeting one of the guards with a high-five. The director unzipped his belt pouch, and grimly approached the gate, joining the queue with the other travellers.

"Hey," said a messy-haired guard with red triangles tattooed on his cheeks.

"Hi," Victor said easily, eyeing the dog warily and keeping his hand close to his belt pouch, for all the good the weapon would do him against the monstrous creature.

"Show me your passport," the guard instructed.

"Right," Victor said, unslinging the loose pack hanging from his shoulder, and digging around inside. As he hunted for the document he'd taken from the underground shelter, the enormous dog approached, pressed its nose against Victor's collarbone and inhaled deeply. Victor froze.

"Ehh? What's up, Shiroimaru?" the man asked. The giant dog took another deep sniff, and whined, looking back at the tattooed man, it's huge expressive eyes crinkling in a dog frown.

"Ah, he says you're sick, mister. You don't look so bad, but you should get that checked out."

"Uh, thanks," Victor said, relaxing as his hand finally found the narrow scroll - just a few inches of paper wrapped around a wooden dowel.

The guard took the document roughly and unrolled it, holding it up to read. "Ehh? This is an old one! The new ones are meant to have your face."

"Sorry," the director said, shrugging, "I never bothered to get it renewed. Is it still okay?"

"Huh? Eh, sure, I guess. What do you think, Shiroimaru?"

The grey dog loomed again, its head approaching to sniff Victor's hair. After another deep inhalation, it slowly bared its teeth, and Victor froze at the sight of jaws that could bite his head clean off at the neck. He only had a moment to feel panic, before he was being swiped by an enormous, wet dog tongue. The dog gave a short, happy bark, and Victor felt sure he was now deaf in that ear.

The tattooed man began laughing. "Ah, you get a pass. Welcome to Konoha."

"Thanks..." Victor said, slipping his passport into his belt pouch and heading through the gate, trying to wipe the dog saliva from his face and hair as he went.

Open grassy spaces and scattered copses of trees bordered the road immediately inside the wall, and as Victor walked further into the interior, these gave way to single storey houses, and then low warehouses, then occasional market stalls and run down, poor-looking stores. Victor noted the wide variety of colours and materials, with buildings made from wood with rice paper windows and screens standing next to structures crafted from bricks, the native orange-yellow stone, white stone blocks, and even a few structures made from riveted metal plates.

The architectural styles also varied wildly from building to building, with some built in a tiered-roof style reminiscent of Japanese castles, while others were built straight up for three or four storeys. There were ordinary rectangular buildings, but also circular towers, oval meeting halls, long-houses, domes, and complex composite shapes. The roads wound logically through the melange of mad architecture, planned seemingly entirely with efficiency in mind, creating broad through-fares and long sight lines, which would be agonizing to try and defend using the medieval weaponry the peculiar guards had on display.

It was a glorious monstrosity of civil design, but oddly, it did more to convince Victor of the truth of his Kali Yuga theory than anything else he'd seen. Where else but the distant future could the traditional and post-modern have been blended together so thoroughly, and the resulting philosophy followed to such utter disarray.

The technology which Victor saw as he wandered through the streets also struck him as incongruous. Tall wooden poles carrying what Victor took to be telephone lines were common, but not ubiquitous, connecting only the largest and most well maintained of the buildings. Peasants carrying sacks of roots or animal cages milled through the streets alongside rickshaw drivers and beasts of burden, while overhead Victor spotted a tower sporting a cluster of satellite dishes.

"Satellite dishes, shit. That means there are still active satellites up there? These people don't look like they could get a firework off, never mind a space mission."

There were no radio towers Victor could see, and the forehead-plated guards he saw wandering around the better parts of town carried no weapons more advanced than swords, unusual given Mizuki's hints that this was a military town. He didn't know whether completely asymmetrical technology reinforced the time travel theory or not, but he found it damned strange.

Eventually the flow of people carried him along into a less busy part of the town centre, where the surrounding buildings were no more than two or three storeys high, most of which seemed to be offices or apartment buildings. Food vendors began to line the sides of the road, though none of them seemed to be doing brisk business. Victor had eaten two of the survivors' lab ration packs on his hike through the forest, but his morning exploration of the city had taken its toll, and he walked past a pancake stall and dumpling vendor to duck under a paper screen of an open air noodle bar.

"Hello! Welcome! Take a seat!" the vendor said cheerily, stirring a saucepan over an open burner.

The smells that wafted out from the stall seemed exotic and tantalizing to Victor, spices he couldn't guess at combining with the smells of meat and fresh vegetables. The sanitized, centrally packed, radiation sterilized base meals he'd been eating for the last few months had created in him a weakness for fresh food, even something as traditionally pedestrian as street ramen, and he was pleasantly surprised upon seeing that it was being prepared traditionally.

"Hey," Victor said, pulling a slip of paper from his belt pouch and holding it up. "I'm new in town- is my money good here?"

The street vendor bent over and squinted at the note before flashing a grin and laughing. "Sure! Though, be careful who you flash your money in front of, some people might take advantage! What can I get for you?"

"Vegetable pork miso, please," Victor said.

"Coming right up!" The vendor said, turning to one of pans behind him and agitating the contents with a ladle. "So, is this your first time in Konohagakure no Sato?"

"Yeah, I'm from the land of Hot Water originally, but I wanted to see something of the world."

"Oh, Hot Water, that's so far away. Some of my ingredients come from there, did you come down with a merchant caravan?"

"Hmm," Victor replied, nodding, though the vendor was still busying himself with the bowl. "I met up with one on the road, and one of the ninja?"

"Oh, this place is full of ninja. It's a hidden village after all," the vendor said, turning and placing a bowl filled with rich noodle broth and slices of broiled pork in front of the director. A pair of disposable chopsticks and a glass of water joined the bowl a moment later.

Victor snatched up the chopsticks, snapped them apart inexpertly and pushed them into the noodles, before pausing. "Uh," he grunted, "itadakimasu?"

The vendor gave a quick grin. "Enjoy," he said, turning back to worry the pans behind him.

As Victor ate, a street musician playing some kind of stringed instrument began to wander down the road behind him, plucking out a gentle, peaceful tune that made Victor think of long warm days watching clouds float by overhead. He lifted his bowl into his lap and turned to look out into the street as he ate, watching the passers-by with sleepy interest. Two men walked past joking and casually shouldering each other. An old woman crept along leaning heavily on a walking stick, a small bag of groceries hanging from her free hand. A young mother with an umbrella led a laughing child by the hand, the afternoon sun shining in her long black hair, the child clutching at a stuffed animal as it skipped beside her.

It seemed normal. It seemed like life had moved on. Victor felt a warmth in his stomach that had nothing to do with the food. Even in their worst case scenario - the complete and total victory of the Threat over the Earth, humanity had survived, and even now they were trying to find a way to crawl out of the darkness. Unless there was a yearly 'purge' night, or secret back room human sacrifices going on, or hidden apocalypse cults that Victor didn't know about, the future didn't seem to be so bad.

A snarling beast monster wandered out in front of the stall, the roaring eight foot tall offspring of a mountain lion and a yeti. Victor spat his mouthful of broth onto the wooden floor and jammed his bowl onto the bar behind him, staggering to his feet. The animal spent several seconds roaring and waving its clawed forearms at screaming villagers, before a furious-looking man in a flak jacket appeared out of thin air in front of the creature and struck it on the head with the edge of his hand. The beast erupted in a cloud of smoke, leaving a young black-haired girl rolling on the floor in laughter. Victor sat back down and turned shakily back around to face the bar.

The stall vendor slapped his hands down on the bar and laughed uproariously. "Ah, that Chieko. She's one of the best - at pranking!"

"Can I get some more water?" Victor asked.

The vendor turned to look at him and calmed. "Ha, your first time around ninja children?" he asked, refilling the glass on the bar.

"My first time around ninja, period," Victor said, taking a deep draw on his glass.

"Oh yeah, Hot Water closed it's ninja village, so I heard. Well, you get used to it."

"How-how can they even do that?" Victor asked, angrily. "Change form."

The vendor shrugged. "I don't know, it's just a henge. Something to do with chakra."

"What's chakra?" Victor asked.

"Oh, you're serious? You really do need to see more of the world," the vendor said. "It's... it's... I don't know. Okay, it's like blood, but the shinobi can use it. I suppose I never really thought about it."

"Right..." Victor said, eyeing the last of his food, but no longer feeling an appetite. "Thanks for the food, how much?"

The director paid his bill and left, looking around warily as he walked towards the tall red dome at the foot of the mountain.

... ||| ...

"Troublesome."

"It's interesting - that they arrived so quickly," said an ageing man in oval spectacles, peering down through the reinforced glass of the hokage's office window. In the courtyard below, a trio of black-and-beige clad shinobi were being escorted inside.

"Hm," said an elderly woman, though her eyes seemed to be practically closed, casting doubt on whether she could see the same scene as the four others peering down through the glass.

"Obviously they were already making preparations to retrieve their target," said a scarred man in a black robe. "This must be their elite extraction team."

"It's strange then - that their team is so small," said the spectacled man. "Three people seems too few to safely extract their countrymen from an entire pursuing village."

"Hm," said the woman.

"For now, we should treat them simply as the diplomats they claim to be," said a wrinkled man wearing the white robes and hat of the hokage - Sarutobi Hiruzen. "I request that you suppress your anger. This is not a battlefield where harsh words will lead to victory."

"Is that why Hiashi wasn't invited?" the scarred man asked.

"Yes, Danzo, you know it well," Hiruzen replied.

"... troublesome," repeated the black-haired shinobi.

The four members of the Konoha council and its jonin commander were standing neatly behind the hokage's desk when the newcomers arrived. The desk had been cleared of documents and writing tools, polished to a thick shine, and set with a pitcher of water and glasses. Four seats were set out behind it, and three in front, turning it into a conference table of sorts. Three of the white-clad shinobi were led into the room by a blue-haired Konoha ninja.

"Hokage-sama, I present Doi Jubei, Yotsuki Kaho also called 'Stormy C', and Yotsuki Kahoru," the blue-haired Konoha-nin said, gesturing in turn to a bald dark skinned man, and two women of differing ages, but with matching dark green eyes. All of them were wearing the charcoal-and-white uniforms and hitai-ate of Kumogakure. The Konoha-nin turned next to the members of the Konoha council standing behind the improvised conference table. "Present are the third Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen; the Konoha council - Danzo Shimura, Mitokado Homura, Utatane Koharu; and our jonin commander Nara Shikaku."

The older green-eyed woman, the one who had been introduced as Kaho, took a step forward. She eyed each member of the Konoha council calmly, cleared her throat, and spat onto the floor. "Hey!"

Danzo scowled and took a step forward, but in the same moment Hiruzen placed a restraining arm on the man's shoulder.

"Let's all take a seat," Hiruzen said, sitting at his usual chair behind the desk. Danzo reluctantly joined him on a chair of his own, and the rest of the council followed.

Kaho strode forward to the chair set out for her, spun it around, and sat down with the chair's backrest pressing against her chest. The other two Kumo-nin didn't sit, instead taking up guard positions on the floor to either side.

"Say, does that window open? It smells like old man in here," Kaho said. There was a brief snort from the direction of the dark haired Konoha jonin-commander, but the only other sound was the grinding of Danzo's teeth.

"Oh, my apologies," Hiruzen said politely, raising his hand and twisting it into the Ox seal. A moment later there was a violent burst of wind that sent the two standing Kumo-nin staggering back across the office floor, and rocked Kaho's chair back on its front legs. By the time the woman's chair had clattered back onto all four legs, the air had calmed, leaving a faint scent of tree sap.

The seated woman brushed a lock of blonde hair back behind her ear. "Nice!"

Danzo slammed his hands down on the desk, speaking in a loud voice, dripping with venom. "What brings three Kumogakure shinobi to Konoha?"

"Oh that," Kaho said, pulling a kunai seemingly from thin air and starting to carve letters into the back of the chair. "We're here because of the treaty. You killed some of our guys, we're here for restitutions."

"It's troubling what you say - that some of your people have been killed. Who do you think were attacked?" the spectacled man asked.

"Oh, only our head ninja, Yotsuki Kanehiro, and his escort," the blonde woman said.

"Oh, your have our condolences," Hiruzen said. "But we did not attack him. To our knowledge, he left Konoha alive some time last night."

"Screw your condolences, we want our justice!" Kaho shouted.

"Of course. Under the terms of the treaty you have permission to investigate serious crimes against your citizens within our territory."

"Stop playing games, old man. We know you killed them," the woman said.

The hokage frowned and shook his head. "Nobody under my command harmed them in any way."

"Yeah, where's your proof?" the woman countered.

"What proof could there be that your delegates left Konoha alive and well? Would you like me to call the wall sentries from last night? They will tell you they saw your party leaving Konoha at high speed, safe and well."

"Nah, they'd say whatever you told them," Kaho said.

"There's a question," The man in glasses asked slyly. "Why should we even want to hurt them? We've just signed a mutually beneficial peace treaty."

The woman's pale skin flashed red. "Well they're missing, and it's suspicious! You're meant to be seeing to their safety."

"Perhaps they decided to take a short vacation on their way home," the old woman at the far end of the table spoke up for the first time. "Have you checked the rock pool resort at Kawa-Ku?"

Kaho finished carving the chair and held out the kunai, point down. She released it, and it fell to the floor, embedding itself in the wood. "So that's how it is. You'd rather start a war than answer your crime."

The sound of wood grating on wood accompanied the hokage standing from the desk, his face grim. "You didn't need to voice that threat. It was apparent enough in your attitude, in your disrespect. I have every intention of honouring this treaty, which is why we have endured your insults and baseless accusations. If we were responsible for the disappearance of the delegation we would be having a different conversation, but if you want to use this event as a flimsy pretext to start a war, we hardly have any control over that."

"Maybe you should listen to what we want," Kaho said.

"No. You have given your accusations, and we have given you the truth," Hiruzen snapped. "You may leave."

The woman sighed and stood, knocking the chair to the floor as she did so. "Come on Koharo, Jubei, let's go see if we can find out what happened to our great leader." She led the other two Kumo-nin from the office, and the blue haired man was waiting to escort them outside.

"Perhaps we should have listened to their demands after all?" the dark haired jonin commander asked.

"No. If we gave in to their demands now, they would know they only had to manufacture a crime and they would be able to control us," Hiruzen said, sadly. "I only hope that by calling their bluff, I have not plunged us into a new war."

... ||| ...

Uchiha Yoshiko stared down at the street below through narrowed eyes. Below him, Ishihara Kenta, unemployed father of a missing boy, made his way through a crowded street. The man carried a light sack over one broad shoulder, and walked with a swagger that suggested he'd been drinking. There was no obvious destination for the man, but he wandered gradually towards the more built up centre of Konoha, where civilian stalls and shops began to line the street, increasingly dense and busy. Yoshiko had hopped buildings five times before Kenta swung left, into a low and dusty store whose sign marked it as a pawn shop.

Yoshiko's vantage position didn't allow him a view inside the shop, and the street was too crowded to risk setting up a shuriken-mirror, but when Kenta emerged several minutes later no longer carrying the sack, what had taken place inside the store became obvious. Now unburdened, the man walked further down the street, passing several stores and restaurants, before entering a worn down bar.

Yoshiko watched the entrance to the bar for several minutes to make sure Kenta didn't emerge, before leaping down to the street, walking to the small pawn shop, and pushing in through the hanging beads.

"Oh, hey! Welcome, come in and look around," the shopkeeper said, a man approaching old age with a receding hairline and a sour twist to his smile. "We've got plenty of things for a nina, take a look at the sword rack by the window."

Yoshiko glanced at the sword rack as he approached the counter, seeing only a cheap wooden frame loaded with nicked and bent weapons, one of which was merely an ornamental prop.

"The man just in here, what did he sell you?" Yoshiko asked, turning his crimson eyes on the store owner.

"Oh Kenta? Just some odds and ends, household things. Nothing illegal!" the pawnbroker said.

"What exactly? Show me."

Yoshiko's tone invited no refusal, even if the man had failed to recognize the Uchiha symbol of the military police on the man's coat, and he bent stiffly down to retrieve Kenta's sack from beneath the counter. He upended the sack on the counter, spilling out the wooden shinobi toy doll, the roll of training kunai from the boy's room, several old coins, and a palm-sized triangular piece of metal engraved with an unusual symbol.

"Just some knick-knacks," the man said, waving over the items. "I gave him a hundred Ryo for the bag, and he was happy to get it."

Yoshiko reached down and picked up the triangular metal plate, letting his eyes play over the nuances of the soft iron. He could see scratches in places, patches worn to a shine with years of use, a small dent near the centre. His eyes could read the story of the object laid out in the metal.

"Oh, that. Not sure what that is, kind of looks like a clan symbol, eh?" the pawnbroker offered.

"This is a hitaie, similar to a modern hitai-ate," Yoshiko said, turning the metal plate over in his hands. "And this design is a clan symbol from before the village was formed."

"Oh? So it's an antique!" the shopkeeper said, peering down at the hitaie.

"Hn. This looks like the symbol of the Kawari clan, ancient cousins to the Senju, but they have all died out. I wonder how Ishihara got hold of it."

"Oh! I got a good deal!" the man seemed pleased.

"I'm taking this," Yoshiko said, sliding the metal plate into his pocket, and pulling out a roll of money from his belt pouch. The detective peeled off a hundred Ryo note, and let it drift to the counter top as he marched from the store, the owner looking on in dejected confusion.

Yoshiko walked a hundred meters down the street until he reached the bar where Kenta had disappeared minutes earlier, pushed open the door, and stepped inside. The central room was dim, lit only by sunlight from paper-covered windows and a screen skylight. Thin tobacco smoke drifted through the air, mixing with the smells of stale sake and shochu. It only took a moment for Yoshiko to notice that all of the staff were women, and scantily dressed women at that. Several screen doors led away from the main room, and when a woman approached him wearing an open kimono, and nothing else, he was forced to accept that the bar actually doubled as one of Konoha's bordellos.

Yoshiko held up his hand to stall the woman before she could speak. "I'm looking for a man-" Seeing the woman's lip quirk upwards, he frowned. "A specific man. He came in here a few minutes ago, I need to speak to him."

The woman's smirk fled, and she took a moment to appraise the shinobi, her eyes falling to the Uchiha clan symbol stitched onto his coat, before she finally nodded. "A man did enter several minutes ago, he is awaiting his attendant in one of our rooms."

"Please show me the room," Yoshiko said.

The woman nodded demurely, and led Yoshiko towards a screen door at the back of the central room. There were no sounds coming from beyond, and Yoshiko risked a glance through the crack of the door. Inside Kento was lying on a large bed, his shirt opened, and his hand resting on a bottle of sake. He seemed to be half asleep, and Yoshiko decided the situation afforded a more subtle approach to the interrogation than he had initially planned.

Placing his hands together, Yoshiko flashed through a pair of hand seals, and whispered "Interrogation Illusion: Guilt Viewing Technique".

There was no flashy display of chakra, no sight or sound to give the technique away, just a subtle tightening of Kenta's posture. After a few moments the man looked up, his expression alarmed. His eyes were unfocused, and he was staring at the almost-closed screen door.

"Y-you!" Kenta said, scrabbling to sit upright on the bed. His face relaxed after a moment, he smiled, and touched the bottle to his lips for a sip. "What are you doing in a place like this Kasa-chan?"

"I came to see you in private. We're having an affair, after all," Yoshiko whispered, relying on the chakra flow of the active technique to relay his guess through whatever illusion the man was immersed in. It wasn't even clear that the whisper would reach the man, but he seemed to hear the words regardless through the effect of the illusion.

"Affair? Us? Heh, in your dreams Kasa-chan. You're a looker, but you give me the creeps," Kenta said, swinging his legs over the bed. "Besides, with that money you gave me, I could stay here for a week! What can you offer over that."

"Lets talk about the money," Yoshiko whispered, "I'm not sure you really deserve it."

"Ohh, you're trying to go back on it! Well don't try it, I've got those nin-police breathing down my neck. Maybe I'll hand you over to them, so you better know your place." Kenta took another mouthful of sake as he slurred the last words.

"What would you tell the nin-police about me?" Yoshiko whispered. "You don't even know my full name."

"Ehh, I'll just tell 'em the woman with the umbrella paid me for the kid. I wouldn't even get in trouble. Legal guardian, that's me, I can do what I want with him. S'like you said, just like an apprenticeship, but no one knows," he smiled, and hiccuped.

"And his poor mother? It's a secret from her as well?" Yoshiko almost hissed.

"Eh, sure. She'll get over it, then maybe she'll let me put a kid in her. I always wanted one of my own."

"And what did you think I wanted with your son?" Yoshiko asked, letting the illusion shape the words to the lips of whoever the man was seeing.

"Eh, what does it matter? Rich pretty lady can't have her own kids, so she buys one from the slums. It'll be better for the kid, really," Kenta slurred. "You sure seemed to treat him better than his own mother, wretched shrew. She was happier even when she was working here," he added, looking around the run down room in growing confusion.

Yoshiko knew the illusion was slipping, even the drunken mind of a civilian could only be manipulated by such a technique for so long. With the last few seconds, Yoshiko pulled a hand free, maintaining the technique with a half-Rat seal. He pushed his free hand into his coat pocket, pulling out the Kawari hitaie and staring at it, willing the image to fold itself into the active illusion. "And why did you sell this, Kenta-san?"

Kenta squinted at the door and swayed slightly as he sat. "Thats- that's..." his face relaxed in recognition. "Oh, that. Some piece of junk passed down from the kid's real father. She said it was a family heirloom, but I took it to that place, it was hardly worth anything after all. Uh, Kasa-chan, what are you doing in a place like this, anyway?" He began frowning at the screen door. "Kasa-chan? That really you?"

Yoshiko jabbed his toe into the gap between the door and the jamb and kicked, sliding the door open with a slap. A moment later he was striding towards the scrambling man.

"Ishihara Kenta, you're under arrest for misleading an official investigation. Please remain silent until your interrogation begins." Yoshiko grabbed the man roughly by the back of the neck and tossed him towards the open door. Kenta stumbled and almost fell, but Yoshiko grabbed the back of his shirt as the man toppled and practically dragged him towards the building's exit.

... ||| ...

Cross tore through book after book. Many of the volumes in the unrestricted parts of the Konoha General Library were bound as modern books, and these Cross had delved into first. They seemed to be the more recent texts, dealing with the current revision of the village history, outlines of geology and geopolitics, and the basics of what the locals of the time period considered to be science - not that they ever called it that by name.

Most of the older books were in the form of scrolls, seemingly written on parchment, rather than paper, but they were proving far more interesting. One scroll intended for school aged children described the 'shinobi' ranks, making clear the system Cross had heard Mizuki referring to at the gate, and a children's introduction to 'ninja' gave Cross at least the beginning of an idea of what chakra was, and how it operated. It seemed to be a form of biological energy, which the local people were able to channel using some kind of mutated psionics into a variety of effects, like the charge an electric eel was capable of, but with much broader applications.

Genjutsu -illusions- were the applications that Cross felt most comfortable with, being not too dissimilar to the induced panic states of a psionic attack. Inducing hallucinations at the very least seemed possible, but the other techniques mentioned in the books stretched his credulity, so called 'ninjutsu', which might allow the shinobi to breathe fire, or teleport short distances, and that was to say nothing at the dark hints in some of the older histories, of enormous demons which supposedly haunted the land.

"Hey, Fuyuki-san," a brown-haired woman said, appearing behind Cross and leaning over his shoulder. "The library's closing soon, you should- huh? Are those kid's books?"

"Ha- the adult ones didn't make much sense to me," Cross said, turning to look at the woman. Up close, he noticed her earrings were tiny dangling scrolls.

"Aw, that's okay Fuyuki-kun. You're sure hungry for books."

"We don't have anything like these where I'm from," director Cross replied honestly. "It's all so new to me."

"Hm, do you have dinner plans? We could go get some barbecue, I could tell you whatever you couldn't find out."

"Ah..." Cross hesitated for a moment at the almost priceless offer of intelligence, before shaking his head. "No, I can't. I have to get back to my hotel before it gets too dark."

The woman's hand fell on Cross' shoulders. "Aw, come on Fuyuki-kun. You said you were new in town, all on your own. I could give you the grand tour."

"That's quite an offer, another time maybe," Cross said, trying to stand.

The woman's grip tightened momentarily, then she relented, standing back. "Fine, fine, I'll hold you to that."

Director Cross made his awkward farewells and left the library, heading to where he estimated the gate to be. He soon found himself wandering through the familiar fields and trees close to the wall, and the gate guards - now two nondescript dark haired women in green flak jackets - waved him through without questions. The sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon as he finally left Konoha, starting down the road he'd walked in on - now cool and deserted.

Cross kept his eyes on the undergrowth beside the path as he walked, and after a few miles he spotted what he'd been looking for, the empty water bottle he'd discarded that morning as a marker of where he joined the road. He collected the empty bottle, pushing it into his pack, and headed off the road into the forest, following the intermittent trail he'd left on his first march through.

"It's getting late, Yagi-san. Do you really want to be walking in the dark?" said a void to Victor's side.

The director jumped, leaping backwards away from the voice, and hitting his back painfully against the bark of one of the giant trees. In front of him was the white-haired shinobi from that morning, Mizuki.

"You! Are you following me?" Cross said.

"You know it's dangerous out here," Mizuki drawled, looking around at the darkening trees. "In the dark you could put a foot in a hole and break your ankle, then you'd be a helpless victim for the predators."

Cross forced his hands to relax at his sides. They had been edging towards his belt pouch where the laser pistol was hidden, but he knew readying himself to reach it would only alert Mizuki to the presence of a weapon. "I can handle myself," he said eventually.

"Oh, no doubt. But even in Hot Water, there must be tales of Konoha's deadly tree vipers? They like to hang themselves from the branches at night, and they wake up when prey comes passing beneath. Then they strike. The adults are large enough to swallow a deer whole - or a person."

The director raised an eyebrow sceptically, but also momentarily cast his eyes up at the shadowy bows overhead.

"As a rookie I once rescued a woman from the belly of a tree viper," Mizuki continued, seeming to notice the director's concern. "Unlike other snakes in Fire, their poison isn't deadly, it only paralyses, so the woman had managed to survive for days in the stomach of the snake. Of course the poison had damaged her nerves beyond repair, so all she could do by then was move her eyes. I carried her back to Konoha, and the hospital had to amputate her legs where the snake's stomach had eaten into them, but she survived. To her family I'm her noble hero. I still visit her sometimes, and look into those eyes."

Cross sniffed. "You know, Mizuki, you're kind of a dick."

Mizuki clutched his stomach and let out a loud laugh. When the laughter faded, he was wearing only a faint smile. "So, Yagi-san, did you enjoy Konoha? What did you think of the library? Ichiraku's was an odd choice for a wealthy traveller, there are better food places in Konoha you know."

"So you were following me all day?" Cross said.

"Of course. I wouldn't leave a spy to wander freely around the village," Mizuki said with a smile.

Cross managed to martial his reaction to 'spy' before replying. "I'm not a spy, I'm just curious."

Mizuki gave a humourless laugh. "You are a spy, and a bad one. Your cover is weak; your passport is an old type which is easily forged; and your clothes, appearance, and accent are completely different to the people of Hot Water."

"So why didn't you turn me in, if you're so sure?" Cross asked.

"I might yet," Mizuki said. "I could take you in now and pass you to the Intelligence division. I hear one of their technicians can do things with a senbon that are too painful even to be used as torture - a technique that's forbidden, since it causes its subject to destroy their own voice with their screams."

Cross stared at the man for a moment, before Mizuki broke the silence.

"But for now, my curiosity outweighs the danger. There's only so much trouble a clueless civilian can make, even if he is a spy, Yagi-san."

"What happens now? We go our separate ways?" Victor asked, longing to pull the concealed pistol.

"Hm, well, I was going to follow you to your camp, but it is getting late, and those tree vipers can be annoying, even to shinobi," Mizuki said. "I guess this is where we part. Be safe, Yagi-san", Mizuki smiled, then leapt at a nearby tree, and deftly ran up it into the darkness above.

Victor waited several minutes before resuming his journey, only noticing after he set off that Mizuki had joined him just before he arrived at their ingress zone of the previous night, where his own sparse trail turned into the wide and unmistakable swath cut through the undergrowth by Sam Clifford's powered armour.

"Shit," Victor muttered. "If he saw this mess, he wouldn't need to follow me. That damn brute might as well have stomped down a road out here."

He travelled the rest of the way back to the shelter in silence, scanning his wrist lamp over the ground, nervously alternating his gaze between the undergrowth ahead, and the dark canopy above.


	4. Chapter 1-4

"We're here - Hi no Kuni, the Land of Fire," Remy said, pointing at a large red area on the map spread out across the underground outpost's central table. "It looks like it covers about six of the old Chinese provinces, from Hunan to Anhui, and stretches all the way down to what must have been Taiwan."

"You sure?" Mike asked, leaning over the map. "Taiwan never had a land bridge to China."

"Yeah... the coastline has changed a little," Remy conceded. "Maybe a combination of sea-level rise and tectonic movement. It looks like the crust under the East China Sea has risen, pushing up this archipelago, creating Mizo no Kuni - the Land of Water."

"It's a bit of a fucking stretch, Remy," Shulz said, leaning back in her chair. "We could be anywhere."

"No, we arrived exactly where the accident happened, I'd bet right down to the elevation," Remy insisted. "Besides, most of the geography matches up. You can't expect to have your landscape get blasted into dust by an alien menace, then put through a global ecological disaster and still be totally recognizable."

"This icon looks like the markings in the supply crate," Mike said, pointing at the image of a country to the North East of Fire.

"That's the Land of Lightning, all of their countries have names like that - Land of Lightning, Land of Tea, Land of Noodles," Remy said. "With all the iconography scattered around on the supplies and equipment, I think the Lightning guys must have built this place, or at least they were the ones who equipped it."

"It's well hidden, perhaps it's a forward outpost for scouting teams, or saboteurs?" Doctor Vodyanov asked, leaning forward and resting her head in her hands. "Could we have arrived in the middle of a war? Or given this structure's disrepair, a cold war?"

"Yu no Kuni," Shulz said, leaning forward to read off the map to break the silence that followed. "I'd like some fucking hot water. A bath full of it would be nice."

"Yeah, Land of Hot Water, that's where all of those travel documents we found in the supplies are from," Remy added.

"Has there been any sign of the director?" Vodyanov asked, calling through to Sam, lying on one of the bunks adjacent to her still unconscious partner.

"Nope," Sam said, looking down from a book to the motdet unit resting against her raised knees.

"He's got a fucking mammoth of a liver, I'll give him that," Shulz said. "He was keeping up with me last night, and there's no way I'd have been out before dawn with the headache I woke up to."

"We're all in a tough situation, but I would have preferred to be consulted before he left on his one-man scouting mission," Vodyanov complained.

"He probably still thinks he's in charge," Shulz mused. "God, I wish we had some cards or something. The story book about magic criminals is fine and all, but I'm bored out of my fucking gourd."

A loud beeping interrupted the conversation, and Sam instantly sat up in her bunk. The group around the table jumped to their feet, their chairs scraping or clattering against the steel floor.

"What is it, Sam," Doctor Vodyanov asked. "Is it the director?"

"I don't-" Sam began, looking down at the motdet unit in her hands. "He's coming in fast. No, there are three of them, three contacts." She threw down the motion detector and grabbed the plasma rifle from beside the bunk. With no time to climb into her armour, the soldier instead rushed into the central room, kicked over the table to provide cover from the door, and crouched into a ready position with her rifle aiming at the entrance to the bunker.

The rest of the group took her lead, Doctor Vodyanov, Remy and Shulz all pulling laser pistols and crouching behind the table.

A knock came at the steel door, a staccato of oddly spaced clangs, like a code. "Hey, Kanehiro, you bastard! Open up if you're in there," came the rich, deep voice of a man.

A few seconds passed, and then the door exploded inwards. The steel bar holding the door cracked and splintered, and it rocked open, one of the hinges giving way as it swung inwards. Standing in the fading afternoon light outside the door was a tall, bald man, with dark skin and a metal-plated headband tied across his forehead.

"Wha- you're not Kanehiro. Enemy contacts!" The figure shouted as he reached down to his thighs, grabbed two handfuls of triangular throwing knives, and made to fling them into the underground outpost. Before he could loose them, the occupants opened fire. The room was filled with a furious cracking, like the sound of applause, and the man seemed to dance in response, rocked by the vaporisation of his own body as slim cylinders of flesh and bone sublimated beneath the onslaught of automatic laser fire. By the time the man fell slackly to the ground, his clothes and hair had caught fire, though he couldn't feel it. The man was dead.

The entire group within the structure looked tense, except for Sam Clifford, still holding her plasma rifle at the ready, the only one to have held fire during the exchange.

"Jubei! No! Raiton: Plasma Barrier!" A woman's cried came from outside the structure. Seconds later, a pale, blonde woman appeared in the doorway, standing behind a strange, shimmering indigo mist.

A few of the XCOM personnel fired their laser weapons at her, only for the beams to be deflected by the shimmering field, the reflected laser beams perforating the roof and walls of the steel structure.

"Hold your fire!" Doctor Vodyanov shouted, but the blonde woman at the door wasn't finished.

The woman's hands clapped together, and began twisting into strange, ritualistic shapes. After five rapid contortions, she shouted "Raiton: Electromagnetic Murder!" Sparks began to form around the fingertips of her clasped hands, but then seemed to ebb. The woman's eyes became vacant, and her mouth drooped open as her hands fell to her sides.

At the door to the bunk room stood the psionic, Ben, with bloodshot eyes and two days of stubble covering a spit-flecked chin. He leaned against the door frame, using the steel wall as a support as he held his hand out towards the intruder.

The blonde woman dashed back out of the door, and in the seconds that followed the sound of clashing steel could be heard.

"I- I want the last two alive," Doctor Vodyanov shouted, turning to Ben. "If possible."

Ben frowned through the concentration etched onto his face. The sounds of close combat continued for several more seconds, before the blonde woman returned, this time carrying a body over her shoulder - dead, or unconscious.

She dropped the body from her shoulder, flashed her hands through another series of contortions, and muttered, "Raiton: Body Pathway Derangement." Her hand crackled faintly with electricity, and she placed two fingers against the back of her neck, before falling to the ground. Ben followed her lead, crashing to the ground himself, leaning against the door frame as he took in shuddering breaths.

"S-Sam, get into your armour," Doctor Vodyanov said, shakily. "I want you outside on sentry duty for the next four hours."

Shulz looked shocked, as if she'd just been woken from a nightmare. "We can't stay here, we've got to move before more of them come!"

Vodyanov stood, looking at the fallen figures by the door, then at the gathered group. "We need to give the director time to return. If he can bring back information about nearby settlements, it will be worth the wait. We'll leave in the morning either way. In the meantime, Remy, Maud, please take the deceased man into the infirmary and lie him on the gurney. Mark, Shulz, restrain and sedate the captives."

Vodyanov walked into the infirmary and began laying out equipment, but it took a minute before anyone else moved. Sam stood first, moving to help Ben back onto a bunk, and then the others moved to their tasks.

"Hey, are you okay?" Sam asked quietly, placing a hand on Ben's chin to lift his face to her. She looked carefully at his eyes, and after a moment he smiled.

"I'm... better," he said, weakly. "But where are we, what happened?"

Sam righted the table and spent several minutes explaining the situation as she'd heard it described the previous night, then minutes more repeating it to the disbelieving young man. When she finally succeeded at convincing him, having laid out the evidence, and repeated it until it sank in, she spent minutes just holding him, an arm wrapped around his shoulder as he stared dumbly at the steel floor.

"I think I would have worked it out," Ben said eventually, his voice little more than a whisper. "Everything is wrong here. From the moment we arrived, I felt like I was under attack. I could feel everything, the birds overhead, the animals hundreds of meters away. All active violent thought, beating at me from every direction. This was the only place where it was quiet, it looked like a dark spot, a void in the noise."

"We think the accident hurt you, brain damage or something," Sam said, gently.

"No, it's not like that. The woman in the doorway, she was loud, but taking control felt normal. It felt easy. It's more like... you, and the others in the base, you're like books, and I can read the words, turn the pages, even write my own notes sometimes. But the woman, and the animals, they all have voices of their own, and it's like they're shouting, or singing."

"Interesting," said a voice from the bunk room door.

Sam looked up to see Doctor Vodyanov standing looking down at the pair, drying her hands on a white towel, stained pink with diluted blood. The soldier stood, and moved into the central room to begin climbing into her armour.

"How are you feeling?" the doctor asked, looking down at Ben.

"Better, Doctor, thanks," Ben said. "It's much better in here."

The doctor finished drying her hands, and turned to hang the towel over a chair. "We won't be staying here, I'm afraid. We'll have to leave in the morning."

"But, couldn't I stay?" Ben asked, looking up at the doctor.

"I'm afraid not. We can sedate you if you wish, but it seems like we'll be in this region for a long time. Probably indefinitely. You must get used to the environment."

Ben looked around the room anxiously, his lips tight and his dark eyebrows drawn together. "What about these?" he asked, pointing at the strange symbols inked on the walls.

"I don't follow," Vodyanov said.

"These drawings, they're singing," Ben said. "Out there is all noise, but these make it sound like music."

The doctor pulled away from the door, heading out of sight into the infirmary, before returning balancing one of the base's small notebook computers in one hand. The other held the radiation sensor from Sam's armour, hooked up to the computer with a bundle of thin wires. She moved around the bunk room, holding the sensor to the ink markings, then moved to the damaged door, holding the sensor outside.

Mike stood from the table and followed the doctor as she returned to the bunk room, making another pass over the symbols. Mike caught sight of Vodyanov through the door and entered to lean against the door frame.

"What is it?" Mike asked.

"These pictographs aren't just art, there's some effect here," the doctor said, focused on the figures scrolling up on the notebook's screen. "Today just keeps becoming stranger."

"What do you mean an effect?" Mike said.

"These glyphs seem to be functional," Vodyanov said, looking up from the notebook at last. "I can't get a good reading of the geometry, but there's some kind of energy field around the structure, it's reflecting the elerium radiation that otherwise saturates the area. They're rendering the structure completely opaque to it."

"The field's coming from the ink?" Mike asked. "Is it magnetic?"

"No, I think... I think these patterns are some kind of circuit," Vodyanov said. "Mike, I want a ten minute analysis of the ink used for these markings."

"Right," the grey haired scientist said, moving to collect a surgical blade from the infirmary, and crouching to scrape a sliver of ink from the painted symbol by the door.

Mike worked with the microscope in the laboratory, pausing briefly to borrow the radiation sensor, while Vodyanov used the tablet's sensor to photograph each of the symbols scattered around the underground outpost. It was closer to twenty-five minutes later when Mike returned to Vodyanov, who was standing behind Maud as the dark haired woman typed on the notebook.

Mike peered over Maud's shoulder, trying to read the computer code she was typing into the device. "The ink's oil based. Non-oxidizing, so it's still wet, but it's covered by a coat of resin to protect it."

"That's it?" Vodyanov asked, turning away from Maud to frown at Mike.

"-And it's supersaturated with charged elerium crystals," he added. "I'd say the ink is purely there as a substrate for the charged crystals to flow through."

"So it is a circuit," Vodyanov breathed.

"It jumped right out at me," Mike agreed. "Our technology is based on silicon and the channelling of electrons. These pictograms have micrometer-scale structures formed by a combination of surface tension in the substrate, the varying thickness of the ink, and the texture imparted by some very subtle brush strokes."

"And instead of electrons, they channel microscopic elerium crystals," Vodyanov said, wonder in her voice.

Mike nodded. "The larger crystals are around ten micrometers across, which really reduces the precision needed in constructing these simple circuits. I don't see how we go from that to energy fields, but..."

Vodyanov collapsed into a chair with a sigh, rubbing her hand against her forehead. "This is becoming so surreal. This technology seems simultaneously far beyond our own, yet much more primitive."

"Don't feel bad, Doc," Shulz said. "These people probably just have the home territory advantage. We've barely had access to elerium for ten years, but they grew up in a world where it's literally in their blood. I bet there's a lot we don't know about it. Hell, I've never seen elerium circuitry in anything we recovered, I bet there's things even the alien bastards who hosed the planet don't know about it," she added, nodding upwards to the darkening sky hidden by the outpost ceiling.

"Thousands of years of evolution and dumb experimentation could hit on things that a rational person might not think of designing into a piece of technology," Mike said.

"And that's not even- I mean, setting up a radiation blocking field with painted symbols is cool and everything," Shulz began, "but you could do the same thing with back-yard-level technology if you had the right knowledge and unlimited access to parts. These aren't better than anything we can do-"

"Anything we could do," Mike corrected.

Shulz frowned and continued, "Anything we could do, they're just pulling it off with more primitive technology. It's neat, I'll grant, but I'm not... intimidated. It's not like when we were first seeing hoverdisks and blaster bombs coming back from the crash missions."

"It's an entire field of technology we were blind to until now," Vodyanov said, shaking her head. "Mike, please work with Maud on the simulation. Give her the composition of the ink, and what you found about its micro-structure. I'd like a working model for these circuits by dawn. Hopefully we can find out how they work before we leave them behind."

"Well, fuck," Shulz muttered. "I thought one good thing about XCOM being gone was that we'd go back to being allowed to sleep."

"XCOM isn't gone," Vodyanov said sternly. "We're still here."

ooo ||| ooo

The shrill bleeting of a motdet unit heralded Director Cross' return to the bunker, hours past sunset. He seemed dirty, ragged, exhausted, and smug, and weathered Doctor Vodyanov's admonishments with all the recalcitrance of a dog who'd eaten the roast.

"The tech's weird, an odd mix of modern equipment and medieval weaponry," Cross said, drinking greedily from a bottle of water. The group had finally been forced to start on the bunker's native supplies, most of which were still fresh. "All the higher-end stuff was clustered around the civic buildings and wealthy residences. I saw power lines, electric lighting, even saw a TV in one of the civilian homes, though I'll be damned if I know what they'd watch with all the background radio interference."

After eating and cleaning himself the director had sat at the central table, and the entire group had assembled around him, saving Ben who was still recovering from his psionic exertion, Sam who was on guard duty outside the base, and Maud who was acting as combination guard and medic in the infirmary, though Maud at least could hear the conversation through the open door.

"If your theory's correct, then most of their technology will be sourced from the Svarga time capsules," Doctor Vodyanov suggested. "If they'd found any caches, they'd have any amount of twenty-first century technology. Ledlamps, alternators, fuel cells, perhaps even computers."

"But no weapons!" Shulz interrupted.

Vodyanov nodded slowly. "It's unlikely that Ankita Singh would have left any advanced weapons technology for the distant human survivors. She would have seen it as counter-productive."

"If humans are just starting to claw their way out of barbarism, the last thing they need is guns and bombs," the director said.

"It hasn't seemed to slow them down much," Remy said. "Remember the mines in the trees on the way here? And the blonde who swept in, that was some kind of ionised plasma shield. They've obviously developed some kind of alternate technology."

"Something that runs on elerium," Mike added. "Maybe a mutated form of psionics that takes advantage of the ubiquitous elerium energy source."

"Yes, I believe that's it exactly!" Doctor Vodyanov said, becoming animated. "The remains of the man were badly burned, but I was able to perform a detailed dissection. There were mutations in the brain reminiscent of the changes seen in psionic soldiers."

Doctor Vodyanov unrolled one of the blank scrolls from the supply crates and began sketching across it using a piece of charcoal. Her swift, precise hand movements drew out the outline of a human brain seen from above, and she quickly sketched in an unusual growth in the space between two hemispheres.

"In an ordinary psionic operative, this region of the brain would be occupied by the corpore lucido, the organ which is responsible for modulating and broadcasting the electromagnetic carrier wave associated with psionics." Vodyanov began excitedly tapping the outline of the growth. "But in the male subject, there was a completely new organ in its place. I believe it to be a heavily mutated corpore lucido, call it the fulmine corpus - the lightning body, based on our observations that this organ allows them to generate and direct electricity in highly complex ways."

Director Cross began shaking his head slowly.

"What?" Mike asked, looking at Cross.

"It can't be that simple." Cross lifted the 'Bingo Book' recovered from the bunker's documents and slapped it on the edge of the table several times. "The abilities listed in this book? I've got every reason to believe they're all true."

"And they describe more than bioelectrical abilities?" Vodyanov asked.

"You haven't read it?" Remy interjected.

Vodyanov frowned and shook her head rapidly. "It seemed like a waste of time."

"I did my own research in the village, which they call 'Konoha'," Cross continued. "Everything I read in the public areas of their library backed up the diversity of abilities in this book, if not the specific talents. I even saw one of them for myself, a perfect visual illusion called a 'henge', and it was a kid who pulled it off."

"But that's fucking crazy," Shulz laughed. "That book's got... creating water out of thin air, swimming through the ground, telekinetic control of puppets..."

"You want to know what's crazy?" Cross asked. "I'm not even sure that their 'henge' is a visual illusion. I think it might be a real, complete transformation."

"Stick that in your conservation of energy and smoke it," Shulz muttered, staring dazedly at the tabletop.

"I'm going to begin the next stage of experimentation," Doctor Vodyanov said, distractedly.

"What could come after dissection?" Remy asked.

"Vivisection," Mike said, gazing balefully at Remy as Vodyanov stood silently, and walked to the infirmary.

ooo ||| ooo

In every experiment that must be run, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and -snap-, the experiment's a game. Vodyanov drew the scalpel down the extended arm of the younger female, the only one of the three hostiles who hadn't invaded the bunker, which had been designated subject B. The doctor peeled back the skin to look inside.

"Circulatory system appears normal, though muscle tissue is unusually dense," Vodyanov said for the benefit of the open notebook computer, recording nearby. Maud had been banished from the room, lacking the ethics training required of all XCOM personnel who were expected to perform experiments on live subjects. Subject B took a deep shuddering breath, but she was deeply anaesthetised - unlikely to wake up during the invasive procedure, if at all. Vodyanov hadn't been sure of the dose, and had erred on the side of caution.

She began slicing through the muscle tissue, daubing away the blood which welled in the open cuts with swaps of cotton wool, which she discarded in a steel tray.

"Muscle tissue has a much higher concentration of blood vessels than expected, and... it seems to be heavily tied in to the lymphatic system, which itself is heavily mutated, and seems to be carrying some kind of..." Vodyanov reached for the radiation sensor and held it momentarily to one of the strands of tissue pulled from Subject B's arm, like wires yanked out of a radio. "Subject's lymphatic system no longer seems to be carrying lymph, instead it seems to be channelling some kind of cold plasma?"

Vodyanov continued cutting, examining, and recording. Biology wasn't her forte, or even her mezzo-forte, but cross-training and general scientific awareness was a common trait among XCOM's science teams, both for practical reasons associated with having such small teams studying such a bizarre variety of topics, and incidentally, as their personal interests took them in directions of their own.

"Can you keep it down in there? You're creeping out the psi-guy," Maud shouted through the open infirmary door.

Back in the central room, Ben had joined the rest around the wooden table. Groggy, and unkempt, he at least seemed moderately alert, and was making quiet conversation whenever the discussion around the table slowed enough for him to interject. Cross had finished giving the rest of the group his report of the village Konoha, with all its mad, disturbing, and wonderful people, animals, and architecture, it's strange history, and the rumours and hints dropped by its inhabitants.

"So, this librarian," Shulz said, jerking her eyebrows up and down.

Mike sighed, exasperated. "Given where we are, what we've learned, what we've lost, is it really the time?"

"It's the perfect time... to repopulate the human race," Shulz persisted.

"I'm not in the mood for this," Ben said, slouching his shoulders running his hands over the bare skin of his head.

"Yeah, I think she liked me," Cross admitted. "She seems like a good source of intelligence. She runs the library, so if we can strike up a relationship, it might provide a route to access more restricted information."

"I think we're missing the real issue," Remy said, sternly.

Ben looked up thoughtfully.

"What if she doesn't like the real you, what if she's only interested because you seem exotic?" Remy concluded.

"Fuck my life," Ben whispered, collapsing back into his folded arms

"Hey, watch the language, Eggnut," Shulz admonished.

From the next room, Vodyanov could be heard growing increasingly excited, if not agitated, as she made further discoveries about the unusual biology of their attackers. Maud typed quietly at a notebook. Cross slunk to the bunk room and closed the door behind him. Remy reluctantly relieved Sam on watch, and one by one they drifted to their stations of the night.


	5. Chapter 1-5

From the top of Hokage Mountain, Yoshiko stared down at the village.

With the world spread out below his sharingan eyes, he could see everything. Every act of kindness, every cruel snub, every dark hiding place, every hooded face. He'd watched two children assault a third and throw his sandals into the river. He'd seen a homeless man wearing a smile of gentle delight feeding scraps of bread to a bird. He'd seen an old woman sit, for an hour, staring at a tree blowing in the wind, with tears at the corner of her eyes.

Distance didn't matter. The overwhelming abundance of sights offered up to him didn't matter. He couldn't help but see these things, and every scene was recorded in perfect clarity, each only a thought away, forever.

Yoshiko sighed and took a moment to rub his aching eyes. The interrogation of Ishihara Kenta, father of the missing boy, hadn't been difficult, or long. He'd been pathetically quick to give up every piece of information he had. His statement had given them almost nothing in the way of leads, but it had given them a single new piece of information – the description of the woman Kenta apparently sold his step-son to.

A woman with long black hair, one point eight meters tall, with a slim frame. A pale, beautiful face, but with a way of moving that Kenta had described as 'creepy' – a description he wasn't able to quantify. She had struck up a business relationship with the man on one of his frequent bar trips, presenting herself as a wealthy woman keen to raise a child, but unable to have one of her own. She'd offered an arrangement to Kenta.

The most slippery part of the situation was that it wasn't completely clear that the arrangement was illegal. Konoha had a framework for the apprenticeship of children, fathers had the right to make decisions on their behalf, and the exchange of money in those situations wasn't unknown or forbidden. It was only the child's shinobi status, making them technically an adult, which had brought the entire affair under the Uchiha's purview.

There was one more piece of information about the woman Kenta had called Kasa-chan; the woman had carried a large umbrella with her at every meeting. Yoshiko found this notable, as there hadn't been even the threat of rain for over a week.

He turned his head towards Konoha's gate, where his eyes caught a flash of black hair. He relaxed when it turned out to be a middle aged man, a foreigner by his look, approaching the gates in a small party of similarly dressed travellers. They travelled with a samurai for a guard – an oddity so far from the Land of Iron, and so close to a hidden village, where shinobi were available to provide more effective and often cheaper security than samurai bodyguards.

Black hair wasn't uncommon in Konoha, but from the top of the Hokage monument there wasn't much of the village which didn't fall within his line of sight, and his eyes could process every detail simultaneously, for as long as he could sustain them. If someone matching Kasa-chan's description took to the streets, Yoshiko would spot her.

Yoshiko was musing on his chances of spotting a suspect when he actually saw a woman with black hair, and had to spend a moment double checking to ensure wishful thinking hadn't got the best of him. His attention followed her as she meandered through the commercial district. She was the right height, and her hair was the right length. He could tell she was slim and pale. She was carrying a purple umbrella.

Yoshiko jumped straight off the edge of the Hokage Mountain, twisted in the air to avoid being clipped by the fourth's stone ear, and landed lightly, in a perfectly controlled crouch on a bustling street beside the Hokage tower. Moments later he was sprinting across rooftops towards where he'd seen the woman. It wasn't far away, a few hundred feet, walking down one of the broad, packed commercial rows.

She was no longer on the street where Yoshiko had spotted her. He raced along to the intersection, and scanned both new directions.

The beginnings of chakra depletion made itself known at the worst possible time; a dull ache which began in the pit of his stomach, and seemed to radiate out through his veins. He'd been staring too long at the village, and would soon lose the vision needed to process the masses of activity that thronged through the streets.

He was about to turn away from the Northwards route when he spotted a flash of the purple umbrella through the crowd. He moved after it.

From rooftop to rooftop, he drew closer. He was two hundred feet away, then a hundred, then fifty. The woman stopped, and turned slightly to give Yoshiko a sidewise glance. A single green eye crinkled in a smile, and she was gone, darting through the crowd at a sprint.

The mass of humanity obscured the woman from Yoshiko's eyes, and he raced after her. He leapt along the rooftops parallel to the street, his pursuit becoming increasingly desperate as he scanned street after street. After several minutes of searching, he was forced to confront the impossible, he'd lost her, the woman had disappeared completely.

Yoshiko spent some minutes asking what people had seen around the place where she'd disappeared, and wasn't surprised to find that they had seen nothing. Ordinary citizens hardly ever saw anything. At least he'd seen her face now; part of her face, a single green eye, but enough for him to be able to recognise her, if he saw her again.

Yoshiko was tired and irritable as he ran back towards Konoha Military Police Headquarters. Resigned to another fruitless day, a dangerous delay in a missing person's case, and with little hope, he began leafing through citizen rosters, bingo books, and criminal records hunting for that fragment of a face.

o o o | | | o o o

"Why, because you screwed it up the first time around, and now you're scared?" Shulz asked, tramping solidly beside Director Cross. "You blew your cover spectacularly! And now that we're here to say hello you're pissing your pants that they'll hold it against you."

"Screw you," Cross muttered darkly. "They have preternatural senses, possibly psionic in origin, and the entire village is militarized. We never had any chance of infiltrating it as civilians, but that doesn't mean I agree wandering in and saying 'hello'. We should be heading to the next village over, somewhere with less of a military presence."

The entire XCOM troupe was slowly picking their way down the dirt road to the village they'd come to know as Konoha, or The Village Hidden in the Leaves. Against Director Cross's advice, and with only the tentative agreement of Sam and a still-weak Ben. The fact that they were now less than a mile from the gates did nothing to stifle the argument of whether or not it was the right course.

Most of the group were dressed in the simple earth-toned clothes from the bunker stores, though Vodyanov had made a point of hanging her tattered white coat over her outfit, wearing the ragged garment like a badge of office. The elaborate symbols painted around and across the dome of Ben's head looked somewhat out of place, but paled into insignificance next to the gleaming, whirring, alloyed armour Sam was wearing.

"I can't guess how you imagine we'd make it to 'Kawa-Ku'," Vodyanov said tiredly. "You saw the same maps I did; forty kilometres, with almost no supplies and no camping equipment. And if your intelligence about the danger of the roads and hostile fauna is accurate, privation might not even be what kills us."

"Better risk the journey than throw ourselves at the mercy of a military dictator," Cross said. He seemed upset more at the obvious logic of Vodyanov's argument than at having been simply overruled.

"Death from environmental dangers is the greatest danger we faced following your plan, and the proximity of a military city presents us with a unique opportunity," Vodyanov shot back.

"A unique opportunity to get tortured and executed," Cross retorted childishly.

"I've dealt with militaristic despots before," Vodyanov said quietly. "They are, without exception, marvellously easy to control. Either they're sane, in which case you need only offer them what they want, which is always power; or they're deranged, and it's possible to live within the cracks of their neuroses."

"Shit, you worked for a dictator?" Shulz asked.

"My recruitment by XCOM was more in the way of a rescue," Vodyanov admitted. "There are plenty of monsters in the world, and most of them think science can offer them more power over their enemies, more control over their people."

"You mean, there _were_ plenty of monsters," Shulz corrected. The third tired correction of that kind she'd made that morning.

Vodyanov cast an eye back over her shoulder at the group. "I don't think humanity can have changed that much."

"You haven't seen what these people can do," Cross said, becoming increasingly morose. "If they decide to move against us, we'll be dead before we even see them move."

"I should be able to give us some warning," Ben offered. "A few seconds at least."

The designs inked across Ben's forehead and scalp were not like those drawn on the walls of the underground base. The software model Maud and Mike had constructed of the elerium circuits found in the base had some ability to work backwards, in that if they were provided with the desired field they had a limited capacity to extrapolate a circuit to generate it.

With the field geometry of the circuits in the underground base to use as the input parameter it should have been simple, but the output of Maud's program was far from efficient, or precise. It had generated circuit designs of staggering complexity, with none of the elegance and simplicity of the designs they'd learned by studying. It required dozens of lines at tortuous angles to be drawn with exacting precision, just to recreate what had been done with a few brush strokes on the wall of the underground bunker.

Mike and Ben had spent a sleepless night synthesising the elerium-saturated ink, and trying to paint it into circuits across Ben's scalp with enough fidelity to screen out the radiation which was affecting him so badly. They'd only partially succeeded. By the end of it, Ben could function outside of the bunker, but suffered from a near constant headache, and the intricate mazework of lines was laborious to apply, and would be smudged by any accidental touch.

The group rounded the final corner in the road and got their first sight of the enormous gates of Konoha. Thirty feet tall, and guarded by three men in green flak jackets, and one dog the size of a bull moose.

"What the shitting dick is that!" Maud barked.

"Suddenly I don't seem so overcautious, do I," Cross said. "Stay behind me, and let me do the talking."

"Like hell," Sam interjected, the speaker of her helmet turning her voice tinny. "The doctor's in charge, remember Cross?"

In the distance the guards were reacting to the sight of the party, or perhaps to Sam in particular. Additional guards were being scrambled from hidden positions on the wall, and the men on the gate were jogging cautiously towards them, led by a man with triangular facial tattoos riding the enormous wolf.

Vodyanov turned a tight smile on Sam. "This time I think Director Cross has the right idea. He has been more immersed in their culture, and that all of the guards are men suggests this might be a patriarchal society, and may react more favourably to a man."

Sam scowled behind her helmet, and let her hand fall to the plasma rifle hanging from its waist harness. Now that the guards were almost on them, her combat sensors showed her that their expressions were alarmed, but not angry or aggressive.

"What are our prospects, Corporal?" Vodyanov asked.

It took Ben a moment to realise she meant him. "I couldn't say, ma'am."

"You're not getting any impression?" she persisted, edging away from the approaching beast despite herself, moving to stand slightly behind Cross.

"It's not telepathy, ma'am," Ben said smartly. "A gentle probe might give me an idea of a target's threat level, and whether they're openly hostile, but I can't read anything but openly hostile intent from moment to moment. I _can_ tell you these guards aren't just going to execute us on the spot."

Vodyanov seemed like she was going to reply, but the guards were on them. The enormous wolf growled low, and one of the men in flak jackets stepped forward.

Cross stepped forward to meet him, and each sized the other up. The apparent leader of the guard group was a dark haired man with a scar across his throat, and dark spiky hair which Cross thought seemed blatantly impractical for military service.

"Hey there travellers," the man began awkwardly. His face was making an effort to project a friendly expression, but his body was tense. "We've been told to keep watch for some people, and two of you match their descriptions."

The director nodded, his face a picture of patient understanding. "I'm Director Victor Vincent Cross, this is Doctor Kate Vodyanov and this is Sergeant Samantha Clifford," he gestured to Vodyanov, and then to the hulk of alien alloys that encased Sam, but forwent introducing the entire group. He took a deep breath to steel himself and let it out in a slow sigh. "Please take us to your leader."

o o o | | | o o o

"I haven't seen you since _that_ event, congratulations on your promotion, Nara-san," Hyuga Hizashi said, taking a seat and casting a pair of milky-white eyes around the simply furnished room. "Hiashi-sama sends his regards, also."

"I'm sure," Nara Shikaku said, leaning back in the central chair of the long table. "I thought he would be here himself. If we're right about them, then they were involved in the incident with his daughter."

"Sadly, the clan head has pressing business to attend to, and can't attend the interrogation personally," Hizashi said smoothly. "I will act on my brother's behalf in this matter, and give him a full report."

"What about the kid, and the other, the ones who fought them? Shouldn't they be here for identification?" Shikaku asked.

"I placed them in the back room. They'll confirm the identity of the strangers from there," Hizashi explained.

Shikaku closed his eyes momentarily and nodded.

"Who else are we waiting for?" Hizashi asked, looking down the length of the table at the two empty seats.

"Only one more, ah here he is," Shikaku said, as a pale, bald man entered the room by the side door. Shikaku stood tiredly to greet the newcomer, and Hizashi reluctantly did the same.

The new arrival looked to be in his early twenties, wearing a high-collared white coat. He wore no forehead protector, but was wearing a pair of dark glasses, even indoors, in the dim interior of the room.

"Kosuke," the man said, giving a sharp bow to Shikaku and Hizashi. "You are Nara Shikaku, the new jonin commander, and Hyuga Hiashi, head of the Hyuga clan?"

"Hizashi, the head of the branch family," Hizashi correct the man darkly.

"Ah-! I'm sorry, Hizashi-sama," Kosuke stammered. "I'm the representative sent by the research division to observe."

Shikaku slumped back into his chair. "Then sit and observe."

"They're outside now?" Hizashi asked.

"Outside the front door," Shikaku confirmed. "We're just awaiting our guards."

The veins around Hizashi's eyes bulged suddenly, and he turned to look behind them, at the bare face of the wall sealing off the rear room of the building. He waited for a moment, then turned to face Shikaku, his face returning to normal as he did so.

"My subordinates confirm it, the two they encountered on that night are present outside. They both show the same strange condition."

"No chakra," Nara said, wonderingly to himself.

"Interesting," Kosuke said, almost to himself.

Moments later a train of masked ANBU filed into the room by the side entrance and took up positions around the edge of the room, facing inwards. They seemed relaxed, but their hands never strayed far from their sword hilts and thigh-straps.

Shikaku performed a final survey of the room, then nodded to the ANBU by the door. The parrot-masked woman knocked twice on the interior of the building's front door. And the sound of scuffling and voices could be heard outside.

"We're ready for you. You, please remove your helmet," a muted voice said on the other side of the door. "The rest of you, surrender your equipment. It will be returned to you pending the results of your interrogation."

There was a moment's pause, and the door stood open. A chunin led the strangers inside in a column two wide, and they quickly fanned out to face the table in a single line, glancing at the masked guards around the room with apprehensive expressions.

Shikaku studied them carefully. To an untrained eye most of them could have been poor villagers from any part of the world. Dressed in simple clothes for the most part, dirty and worn. Some of them carried shallow cuts, bruises, and mild burns. Hair was tattered and in places scorched, and the men wore several days worth of stubble.

Their appearance of mediocrity was dispelled by three things. Firstly was the enormous blonde woman in gleaming metal armour, which looked far too heavy for her to even move. Then there was the bald man with what seemed to be elaborate fuinjutsu painted across his scalp, looking between the shinobi assembled around him with a confident, knowing half-smile.

Finally there was the woman. She looked to be in her mid forties, was wearing a long white lab coat – tattered and burnt in places – but it was her eyes which marked her as extraordinary. She looked around the room with a fierce, defiant curiosity. Her gaze was one which dissected the world around her as surely as any dojutsu.

"Which of you is the leader?" Shikaku asked.

A middle aged man with black hair stepped forward. "I'm Director Victor Vincent Cross," he said. The man eyed Hizashi with suspicion, no doubt remembering the Hyuga pursuit of his party on that night.

"You don't need to worry about being attacked here," Shikaku told the man absently. "We don't blame you for the events of that night. In fact, depending on your side of the story, we might owe you thanks."

The man, Cross, nodded. "And we don't hold it against you that we were attacked. Nobody was hurt, on our side at least. I hope your man recovered all right?"

Shikaku raised an eyebrow at the man's attitude. It was a bold gesture to walk into a hidden village and benevolently offer your hosts forgiveness for carrying out their duties. A shinobi more proud than Shikaku would have been insulted. His thoughts turned to the Hyuga who was injured during the pursuit, and he half turned to Hizashi, the question in his eyes.

Hizashi lowered his head slightly. "He recovered after several hours, and has dedicated himself to training to overcome the weakness of his technique."

"Now that we've seen to the niceties..." Shikaku began, folding his hands together and resting his elbows on the table. "Who are you, and where are you from?"

The dark haired man turned to the woman in the white coat. They exchanged a long glance, some silent communication passed through them, and the man called Cross sighed minutely as he turned back to the three shinobi seated at the table.

"This is Doctor Vodyanov, the leader of our research team, and Sergeant Clifford, the highest ranking military officer of our group," he began reluctantly. "We're part of an organisation called XCOM, based in a country a very great distance from here. Our base was situated in a country called China, though it's so distant we don't expect you to have heard of it, and none of us are natives of that country."

Shikaku shifted in his seat. For all the man's obvious anxiety, and his outright hostility to the Hyuga, he was delivering his explanations clearly and without emotion.

"What brought you so far from your home, inside Konoha's borders?" Shikaku asked.

"Well... this may be a little hard for you to understand," the man called Cross began. "We arrived here by accident. We were conducting an experiment in our base, and we were transported here directly. I understand that may seem far fetched, but we've made the decision to be honest about our arrival." The man shot a sideways glare at the woman in the white coat.

"What kind of experiment?" Kosuke asked suddenly.

Cross gave the woman to his left an uncertain glance. "It was a..."

The woman took over. "An experiment into transportation technology. We didn't fully understand what we'd developed, nor how it would interact with the background space-time-"

"A space-time ninjutsu," Kosuke interrupted. "You've developed a way to instantly transport yourself over great distances?"

The woman raised one eyebrow at Cross in the ghost of a self-satisfied smile. "Yes. Our equipment was left behind, and we didn't have enough time to fully understand the effect."

"What was the purpose of your organisation?" Shikaku asked finally.

The woman, Kate, exchanged a glance with Cross and ceded the answer to him. It began to become obvious to Shikaku who was really in charge of their group.

"We were a paramilitary group, concerned with defence," Cross said, quickly.

Shikaku took a moment to digest that before continuing. It was a common enough purpose for any organisation, if vague. He considered teasing apart that answer, but finally decided to leave it to the specialised individual interrogation. "Please explain the events of two nights ago, from your point of view."

Cross took a deep breath and began recounting the tale of their arrival. He spoke of their chaotic landing, finding the dismembered bodies, of their confusion. He mentioned the baby girl, and the flare. He described their flight through the forest, the encounters with their Hyuga pursuers, and on finding the underground bunker.

Shikaku exchanged a significant glance with Hizashi at this.

The man continued, describing the documents they'd found in the bunker, and explained how his group came to realise they'd been transported many hundreds of miles from their home. By the end of it, Shikaku was chewing the inside of his lip thoughtfully.

"And now that you're here, what are your intentions?" Shikaku asked finally. "Will you try and return home?"

Cross began to speak, but Shikaku silenced him with a glare and a sharp gesture.

"I want the woman to answer: Kate-san."

The woman called Vodyanov took a half step forwards. "Going home is impossible for us now. We've learned something of your city's history; that it was founded by a gathering of disparate clans, who all joined together to escape the horrors of war. We are also seeking to escape those horrors, in a way. I'd ask that you consider allowing our group, our clan, to become residents in your city. We are impossibly distant from our old loyalties, we know nothing of the surrounding lands, and our survival is our first concern, and our parole. I'd ask that you trust us to live among you."

"It's not without precedent," Kosuke said, almost eagerly.

Shikaku rubbed his beard thoughtfully. "Your incredibly story would have to be confirmed, Kate-san."

"Of course," she replied. "Though, it seems that will be difficult. We don't have much corroborating evidence."

"Would you submit to interrogation?"

"Torture?" the woman asked, in a bland, neutral tone.

Shikaku raised an eyebrow. "No, merely ninjutsu designed to probe your mind."

"Provided your techniques will do no lasting harm, we would all consent, save for that man," The woman said, turning to glance at the bald man with the strange fuinjutsu paint. "He is unusually sensitive to the radiation that seems to be ubiquitous in the plants and animals of this region."

"Radiation?" Shikaku asked, uncertainly.

"She means, perhaps, chakra?" Kosuke asked. "That is, if the rumours I've heard are true?"

"They are true," Hizashi said darkly, staring intently at the woman in the white coat.

"Fascinating," Kosuke breathed. "The Yamanaka techniques may not even work on them, Nara-sama."

"If the rest of your group are honest during their interrogations, then we can skip that one, if you think his safety's at stake," Shikaku allowed, benevolently.

"Then... we put ourselves at your mercy," the woman said, lowering her head.

"How is it you were able to carry out a powerful transportation ninjutsu, crippled as you are?" Hizashi asked suddenly.

The woman looked confused for a moment, before answering. "I don't know what you mean by 'ninjutsu'. Our devices operate on principles of electricity, photonics, electromagnetic and gravitational radiation."

"You claim you can perform ninjutsu using a device?" Hizashi asked.

This time Cross intervened. "Yes. Some of the equipment confiscated from us works that way. If you were to allow us them back, we could demonstrate."

"Your equipment will be examined by our technicians during your int-"

"I would advise against that," the woman's voice came, cutting through Shikaku's like a black glacier. "If mishandled, they can be... extraordinarily dangerous."

"Ah-fine, we'll await your guidance," Shikaku said quickly, summoning his most placating expression. "For now, please go with the guards waiting outside. They will take you for individual interrogation, after which we will find you somewhere to stay temporarily."

The woman gave Shikaku an icy smile, which caused at least one of the ANBU to look away.

o o o | | | o o o

The door fell closed with a bang, and Shikaku looked around at the other two members of the interrogation panel.

"What do you both think? It's quite a fantastic story," he began, pulling a small flask from his pocket and pouring out a drink in the glass in front of him.

"No chakra. I didn't want to believe it," Hizashi said, weakly. "How are they even alive."

"Fascinating," Kosuke said, again. "Did you see the armour their soldier was wearing? Could you hear it? I think it might have had a life of its own, perhaps some kind of henged summon, or- but without chakra- no, how- it seemed alive. What did you make of it?"

"It was filled with strange devices, it was some unnatural mechanical thing," Hizashi replied. "And the bald one, the fuinjutsu he wore blocked my byakugan."

"A barrier fuin would fit with their claims that he was painfully sensitive to chakra," Shikaku allowed. "Do you think they were telling the truth about the rest of it?"

Hizashi took a deep breath. "Undoubtedly. Their leader, the man called Cross, was a spectacularly bad liar. I detected several evasions, but no outright lies."

"He wasn't their leader," Shikaku corrected. "He was probably only posing as the leader. Perhaps they thought a woman wouldn't be taken seriously, or that we might execute whoever claimed to lead the group."

"She did seem dominant," Hizashi allowed. "But to say they were honest does not mean I recommend they be allowed to stay. The service they rendered to my house puts me in their debt, but their bodies are so strange, so alien. Their lack of chakra is unnatural. They must be put out of the village."

"That's not our decision to make," Shikaku said, admonishing the Hyuga. "The report will be on the hokage's desk within a few hours. He will decide what will happen tomorrow."

"We should consider what they can bring to the village," Kosuke interjected. "Getting to examine that armour alone would be worth a decade of research, even it possesses no abilities beyond what the Hyuga reported."

"The head family will push for knowledge of the armour to be made an S-rank secret," Hizashi said. "My brother will not permit techniques which block our clan techniques to become widely known. It would be in Konoha's interests to suppress such knowledge as well."

"Petty clan politics aside," Kosuke said, drawing a glare from Hizashi, "it's clear they have something to offer. If their story turns out to be true, perhaps they can even rediscover their transportation technique. The secret of the hiraishin was never rediscovered, after all."

Shikaku began making notes on a piece of printed Konoha paperwork. "What did they call their organisation?"

"Ikesu Komu," Kosuke answered, leaning back and looking up at the painted ceiling thoughtfully.

"Crowded Cages? That's ominous," Shikaku muttered, scribbling. Soon the document was filled out, and bore a concise recounting of the conversation and the panel's salient observations.

"Our job ends here, gentlemen," he said, signing the document with a flourish. "We have asked our preliminary questions, and judged their honesty. From here it's in the hands of Ibiki, and the hokage. Now, who wants to hit a bar?"

Hizashi shook his head minutely. "I must report back to my brother."

Shikaku turned reluctantly to Kosuke.

"I want to examine their equipment- without interfering with it!" Kosuke added quickly, noticing Shikaku's glare.

"Fine, fine. Drinking alone, I'm used to it," he said, standing and stretching.

o o o | | | o o o

Sarutobi Hiruzen adjusted his desk lamp to better read the document in front of him. He scanned it with tired, half-lidded eyes, then had to go back and start it again for the second time. The document was filled out as an interrogation report, but it read more like a debriefing.

Nara Shikaku, the new jonin commander, had interrogated a group of strangers who it seemed had been tangentially involved in the kidnapping of lady Hyuga. It seemed that they were the mysterious third party who had dispatched her kidnappers and aided in her recovery. Hiruzen read on with interest.

"How interesting," he muttered to himself, reaching the dialogue between Shikaku and the strangers, then shouted at the door to his office. "Izumi!"

A few seconds later, a well-endowed blonde woman appeared at the door. "Yes, Hokage-sama?"

"Fetch me the head of the Konoha Research Division, tell him I have some newcomers he will find interesting."

"But... it's so late, Hokage-sama," the woman hesitated. "He won't be pleased to be disturbed," Izumi pressed her hands together. It was clear the head of Konoha's research division made her uneasy, and the prospect of disturbing during his personal time was unappetising.

"Tell him it's a personal summons from me," Hiruzen ordered. "And besides, when he sees what has turned up, I'm sure he'll thank you."

"I-if you say so, Hokage-sama," the woman said, turning hesitantly, and walking back down the corridor as if going to her execution.

Hiruzen lit a pipe and puffed happily as he began reading the individual interrogation reports for each member of the strange party. The Yamanaka techniques had been less effective on the strangers than usual, a fact attributed to their strange biology, but the flashes of images and memory that had been glimpsed had done much to confirm the truth of their story.

Their homeland was apparently a very unusual place indeed. Tall buildings of glass and steel, rare in the elemental nations, and rarer still new and intact. The Yamanaka interrogator had claimed to see machines he had no understanding of, and in the minds of the soldier, glimpses of monstrous beings – the enemy they claimed their organisation was created to fight.

They were a curious bunch, their character would need to be assessed – not every stranger could be trusted, but they posed interesting questions, and raised interesting possibilities. He was lucky to have the perfect subordinate to pursue those possibilities.

A man appeared at the door to the hokage's office. A little under two meters tall, with long black hair and pale, clear skin. He surveyed the old man behind the desk with yellow eyes.

"You summoned me," he said, a petulant statement more than a question.

"Yes, come in Orochimaru. I have some people you may be interested in."

"I am already occupied by many interesting things," the man purred.

"These people travelled hundreds of miles using a space-time technique."

"Oh?" Orochimaru croaked, despite himself.

"And they have no chakra of their own at all," Hiruzen, added with a wry smile. "It's not part of their biology."

Orochimaru walked forward and, pausing for permission, picked up the stack of papers from the desk.

"I'd like you to meet with them tomorrow, and see whether they provide anything of worth."

"Yes, Sarutobi-sensei," Orochimaru said, leafing through the papers as he walked out of the office.

"Heh, that Orochimaru," Hiruzen muttered. His voice sounded like a grumble, but he wore a small smile. Moments later, he'd drifted into sleep.


End file.
